Car arsons spread to Paris as waves of unrest continue

PARIS — Ten nights of urban unrest that brought thousands of arson attacks on cars, nursery schools and other targets from the Mediterranean to the German border reached Paris where at least 28 cars were burned overnight in the French capital, government officials said today.

Some 2,300 police poured into the Paris region to bolster security on a restive Saturday night while firefighters moved out around the city to douse blazing vehicles.

At least 918 vehicles — including those in Paris — were burned during the 10th night of violence, said the Interior Ministry's operational center tracking the violence.

Arsonists have also burned grocery stores, video stores and other businesses in what Patrick Hamon, spokesman for the national police, called "copycat" crimes.

Police made 186 arrests nationwide overnight.

On Friday night, 900 vehicles were torched across France in the worst wave of arson since the urban unrest began.

The violence originally wasconcentrated in neighborhoods northeast of Paris with large populations of Arab and African Muslim immigrants.

The Normandy town of Evreux, 60 miles west of Paris, appeared to suffer the worst damage Saturday. Arsonists burned at least 50 vehicles, part of a shopping center, a post office and two schools, said Hamon. Attacks were also reported in Cannes and Nice on the Mediterranean.

The violence erupted Oct. 27 following the accidental electrocution of two teenagers who hid in a power substation, apparently believing police were chasing them. One of the dead teenagers was born in Mauritania and the second teenager's family was from Tunisia — both Muslim countries.

Anger was fanned days ago when a tear-gas bomb exploded in a mosque in Clichy-sous-Bois — the northern suburb where the youths were electrocuted.

Government officials have held a series of meetings with Muslim religious leaders, local officials and youths from poor suburbs to try to calm the violence.

In quiet Acheres, on the edge of the St. Germain forest west of Paris, arsonists burned a nursery school, where part of the roof caved in, and about a dozen cars.

In another attack, youths in the eastern Paris suburb of Meaux prevented paramedics from evacuating a sick person from a housing project. They pelted rescuers with rocks and then torched the waiting ambulance, an Interior Ministry official said.

There appeared to be no coordination between separate groups in different areas, Hamon said. But within gangs, he added, youths are communicating by cellphones or e-mails.