French leaders declare state of emergency

PARIS — France declared a state of emergency Tuesday to quell the country's worst unrest since the student uprisings of 1968 that toppled a government, and the prime minister said the nation faced a "moment of truth" over its failure to integrate Arab and African immigrants and their children.

Rioters ignored the extraordinary security measures, which began today, as they looted and burned two superstores, set fire to a newspaper office and in Lyon, paralyzed France's second-largest city's subway system with a gasoline bomb.

The emergency measures, valid for 12 days, clear the way for curfews after nearly two weeks of rioting in neglected and impoverished neighborhoods with largely Muslim communities.

About 600 cars were burned overnight, about half as many as the previous night, Claude Guerin, Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy's chief of staff, said.

Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, tacitly acknowledging France has failed to live up to its egalitarian ideals, reached out to the heavily immigrant suburbs where the rioting began. He said France must make a priority of working against the discrimination that feeds the frustration of youths who feel that they do not belong in France.

"We must be lucid: The Republic is at a moment of truth," Villepin told parliament. Despite his conciliatory tone, Villepin said riot police faced "determined individuals, structured gangs, organized criminality," and that restoring order "will take time."

Rioters have been using mobile-phone text messages and the Internet to organize arson attacks, said police, who arrested two teenage bloggers accused of inciting other youths to riot.

The rioting is forcing France to confront anger building for decades among residents who complain of discrimination and unemployment. Although many of the French-born children of Arab and black African immigrants are Muslim, police say the violence is not being driven by Islamic groups.

Images of teenagers from immigrant families pelting riot police with stones and gasoline bombs — reminiscent of Palestinian youths attacking Israeli patrols — are resonating throughout the Arab world.

The Egyptian daily Al-Massaie referred to the riots as "the intefadeh of the poor." Arabic satellite networks have given lead coverage to the mayhem with regular live reports. Newspapers throughout the region have closely followed the story, calling it a "nightmare" and a "war of the suburbs."

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

The 50-year-old state-of-emergency law that President Jacques Chirac invoked was originally drawn up to quell unrest in Algeria during its war of independence from France and was last used in December 1984 by the Socialist government of President François Mitterrand against rioting in the French Pacific Ocean territory of New Caledonia.

Under the emergency laws, police — with 8,000 officers deployed and 1,500 reservists called up as reinforcements — could be empowered in areas where curfews are imposed to put troublemakers under house arrest, ban or limit the movement of people and vehicles, confiscate weapons and close public spaces where gangs gather, Villepin said.

The widespread violence has already led France to begin fast-track trials, with 106 adults and 33 minors so far sentenced to prison or detention centers.

The violence started Oct. 27 as a localized riot in a northeast Paris suburb angry over the accidental electrocutions of two teenagers, of Mauritanian and Tunisian descent, 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 such as Algeria.

Associated Press writers Christine Ollivier, Jamey Keaten and Angela Doland contributed to this report.