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Date Posted: 17:05:13 11/28/07 Wed
Author: JMR
Subject: Could happen here

Wednesday, Nov 28, 2007
Posted on Wed, Nov. 28, 2007

Tempers still seething in immigrant suburbs



By ELAINE SCIOLINO
The New York Times
PARIS -- Two years after France's immigrant suburbs exploded in rage, the rituals and acts of resentment have reappeared with an eerie sameness: roving gangs clashing with riot police forces, the government appealing for calm, residents complaining that they are ignored.
And while the scale of the unrest of the past few days does not yet compare with the three-week convulsion in hundreds of suburbs and towns in 2005, a chilling new factor makes it, in some sense, more menacing. The former rock-throwers and car-burners have armed themselves with hunting shotguns and turned them on police.

More than 100 officers have been wounded, several of them seriously, the police say. Thirty of them were hit with pellets from shotguns, and one of the wounded was hit with a type of bullet used to kill large game, said Patrice Ribeiro, a police spokesman. Police circles were swirling with rumors that the bands of youths were procuring more shotguns.

"This is a real guerrilla war," Ribeiro told RTL radio, warning that police, who have struggled to avoid the use of excessive force, will not be fired upon indefinitely without responding.

The events of the past few days make clear that the underlying causes of frustration and anger -- particularly among unemployed, undereducated youth, mostly the offspring of Arab and African immigrants -- remain the same.

"We have heard promise after promise, but nothing has been done in the suburbs since the last riots, nothing," said Francois Pupponi, the Socialist mayor of Sarcelles, which has been struck by violence. "The suburbs are like tinderboxes. You have people in terrible social circumstances, plus all the rage, plus all the hate, plus all the rumors, and all you need is one spark to set them on fire."

On Tuesday, there were the first signs of the violence spreading beyond the Paris region, when a dozen cars were set afire in the southern city of Toulouse.

The latest unrest was sparked when two teenagers, identified as Moushin, 15, and Larimi, 16, were killed when their motorbike hit a police car Sunday afternoon in the Paris suburb of Villiers-le-Bel. The teen had been riding without helmets.

On Tuesday, Prime Minister Francois Fillon told Parliament that the clashes were "unacceptable, intolerable, incomprehensible."

In Villiers-le-Bel on Tuesday afternoon, the atmosphere was tense. About 300 people, including children, marched silently in memory of the two dead teenagers.

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