Youths target police as French riots continue

AULNAY-SOUS-BOIS, France — A week of riots in poor neighborhoods outside Paris continued Thursday, with youths shooting at police and firefighters and attacking trains and symbols of the state.

Facing mounting criticism, Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin vowed to restore order as the violence that erupted Oct. 27 spread to at least 20 towns, highlighting the frustration simmering in housing projects that are home to many North African immigrants.

Unrest flared for an eighth straight night Thursday, though scaled down from previous days. Young men fired buckshot at riot police vehicles in Neuilly-sur-Marne, while a group of 30 to 40 harassed police near a synagogue further east in Stains, said the top official of Seine-Saint-Denis, Prefect Jean-François Cordet.

An Interior Ministry operations center monitoring the violence said some 60 vehicles were torched overnight in the Seine-Saint-Denis region and a total of 165 throughout the Paris metropolitan area.

The unrest cast a cloud over the end of Ramadan, the Muslim holy month. In Clichy-sous-Bois — the heart of the rioting — men filled the Bilal mosque for evening prayers, but streets were subdued, with shops shutting early.

"Look around you. How do you think we can celebrate?" said Abdallah Hammo as he closed the teahouse where he works.

Riots erupted in an outburst of anger in Clichy-sous-Bois over the accidental electrocution Oct. 27 of two teenagers who fled a soccer game and hid in a power substation when they saw police enter the area. Youths in the neighborhood suspect that police chased Traoré Bouna, 15, and Zyed Benna, 17, to their deaths.

Since then riots have swelled into a broader challenge against the French state and its security forces. The violence has exposed deep discontent in neighborhoods where African and Muslim immigrants and their French-born children are trapped by poverty, racial discrimination, crime, poor education and housing.

The Interior Ministry released a report Thursday exonerating officers of any direct role in the teenagers' deaths.

The report said police went to Clichy-sous-Bois to investigate a suspected intrusion on a building site but did not chase the teenagers who were killed. A third teenager told investigators he and the other boys were aware of the dangers when they hid in the substation.