More french violence as police guard Paris
Thousands of police guarded the Eiffel Tower, the Champs Elysees and train stations, as part of emergency measures enacted in response to text messages and Internet postings that called for “violent actions” in Paris.
National Police Chief Michel Gaudin said police were taking “every precaution,” including banning certain public gatherings, a day after the calls for “violent actions” yesterday evening in Paris were posted on Internet blogs and sent in text messages to cell phones.
“This is not a rumour,” Gaudin told a news conference, citing Paris’ best-known landmarks among potential targets. ”One can easily imagine the places where we must be highly vigilant.”
However, no trouble anywhere in Paris had been reported last night.
Unrest has weakened in intensity since the government declared a state-of-emergency on Tuesday, empowering local authorities to invoke exceptional security measures such as curfews if deemed necessary.
Despite heightened security around the country, new violence broke out last night in the south-eastern city of Lyon. Police fired tear gas to disperse stone-throwing youths at the city’s historic Place Bellecour. It was the first time in 17 nights of unrest across France that youths and police clashed in a major French city.
In separate incidents last night in the southern city of Carpentras, rioters rammed burning cars into the side of a retirement home and a school, national police spokesman Laurent Carron said. A primary school and linen store were also set ablaze in Carpentras, he said.
Police counted 315 cars torched and said 161 people were arrested across France overnight as of 4am.
A police officer was injured after he was hit with a metal ball dropped from an apartment building in the northern Paris suburb of La Courneuve, Carron said.
Arsonists also set an electronics store on fire last night in Blangnac, on the outskirts of Toulouse, the regional government said.
Just hours earlier, regional authorities had imposed a weekend curfew on Lyon, France’s third-largest city, that barred youths under 18 from being outside without adult supervision between 10pm and 6am
Some 40 towns, suburbs and smaller cities have imposed curfews on minors to clamp down on violence that started October 27 in a tough Paris suburb and has grown into a nationwide insurrection marked by extensive arson and clashes with police.
Paris police took the exceptional step of banning all public gatherings that could “provoke or encourage disorder” from 10am Saturday to 8am today. Police spokesman Hugo Mahboubi said it had been at least a decade and possibly longer since authorities had imposed any similar ban on gatherings in the French capital.
As unrest continued, calls for peace and political change were mounting.
Police allowed an evening demonstration in Paris’ Latin Quarter, which drew several hundred people protesting against the state-of-emergency measures. Many of the protesters were left-wing political groups and members of Communist-backed unions. They called for the resignation of Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, who has been accused of inflaming the violence by calling troublemakers “scum.”
Under tight police surveillance, protesters called the strict new measures a “provocation” that would not resolve violence or answer the long-term problems that caused the unrest. A similar rally in the southern city of Toulouse drew about 700 people.
