Rioters Defy Curfew, Violence Down

Rioters defied emergency laws that took effect Wednesday, as they looted and burned two superstores, set fire to a newspaper office and paralyzed France's second-largest city's subway system with a firebomb.

However, the number of car burnings - a barometer for the unrest - dropped sharply, suggesting the movement lost steam overnight. From Tuesday to Wednesday, youths torched 617 vehicles, down from 1,173 the previous night, national police spokesman Patrick Hamon said. Incidents were reported in 116 towns, compared to 226 the night before.

President Jacques Chirac announced extraordinary security measures, which began Wednesday and are valid for a 12-day state of emergency, clearing the way for curfews after nearly two weeks of rioting in neglected and impoverished neighborhoods with largely Muslim communities.

The violence started Oct. 27 as a localized riot in a northeast Paris suburb angry over the accidental deaths of two teenagers, of Mauritanian and Tunisian descent, electrocuted while hiding from police in a power substation.

It has grown into a nationwide insurrection by disillusioned suburban youths, many of them French-born children of immigrants from France's former territories like Algeria. France's suburbs have long been neglected, and their youth complain of a lack of jobs and widespread discrimination.

Fifteen hundred police reservists have been called up to help patrol the streets, reports CBS News correspondent Elaine Cobbe, but the rioters are mostly in small, mobile groups and they know their neighborhoods better than the police.

The French capital and its suburbs, as well as more than 30 other cities, are covered by a new state-of-emergency decree that gives police sweeping powers to quell unrest, the government said Wednesday.

The new decree defined which parts of France would be covered by the state of emergency declared Tuesday by the government. Aside from Paris, other major cities concerned included Marseille and Lyon.

Officials were forced to shut down the southern city of Lyon's subway system after a firebomb exploded in a station late Tuesday, a regional government spokesman said, adding no one was hurt.

Also Tuesday, youths looted and set fire to a furniture and electronics store and an adjacent carpet store in Arras and torched a newspaper office in Grasse.

Nine buses were set ablaze at a bus depot in Dole, in the eastern Jura region, Reydy said. A bus exploded in Bassens, near the southwest city of Bordeaux after a firebomb was thrown into it, he said, adding that the driver escaped.

In Nice, a man is in serious condition after being hit by a barbell that fell from a high-rise building in a neighborhood where there had been recent riots, a local official said. Authorities are investigating whether it was an accident or an attack.

Youths threw gasoline bombs at police, who retaliated with tear gas in the southern city of Toulouse, where Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy was visiting, LCI television said.

Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin said riot police faced "determined individuals, structured gangs, organized criminality." Police say rioters have been using mobile phone text messages and the Internet to organize arson attacks.

Villepin, tacitly acknowledging that France has failed to live up to its egalitarian ideals, said discrimination is a "daily and repeated" reality.

"We must be lucid: the republic is at a moment of truth," Villepin told parliament Tuesday in a debate where lawmakers spoke frankly about France's failings.

A poll published Wednesday by the daily Le Parisien showed 73 percent of people in France favored allowing authorities to impose curfews. The poll was based on telephone interviews conducted Tuesday with a random sample of 805 people across the country. No margin of error was provided.

French regional officials are preparing to use the state of emergency powers to impose curfews. The Interior Ministry said there is no centralized list of towns and cities that would be affected, because curfew measures are being drawn up locally.

The northern French city of Amiens, the central city of Orleans and Savigny-sur-Orge, and the Essonne region south of Paris said they plan curfews for minors, who must be accompanied by adults at night. Amiens also planned to forbid the sale of gasoline in cans to minors.

Curfew violators face up to two months in jail and a euro3,750 (US$4,400) fine. Minors face one month in jail.

Curfews threaten every French person's most prized possession, liberty, not something any French government can do lightly, reports CBS News correspondent Sheila MacVicar.

In Clichy-Sous-Bois, where the rioting began, MacVicar spoke with a group of high-school students, who said they think a curfew will only make matters worse. One student said there isn't enough work for young people in the suburbs and that "every time we go somewhere, we're hassled by the police," and called racist names.

And while the students say they are scared of the violence, each admitted to knowing at least one person who had been arrested for being involved in the riots.

"My 11-year-old just saw a bus go up in flames and tomorrow he has to get in a bus to go to school," one witness in Clichy-Sous-Bois told MacVicar.

French historians say the rioting is more widespread and more destructive in material terms than the May riots of 1968, when university students erected barricades in Paris' Latin Quarter and across France, throwing paving stones at police. That unrest, a turning point in modern France, led to a general strike by 10 million workers and forced President Gen. Charles de Gaulle to dissolve parliament and fire Premier Georges Pompidou.