Riots in France's poor city suburbs appeared yesterday to be spiralling out of control after the worst night of violence so far and the first death, deepening the severest unrest to engulf the nation since the 1968 student uprisings.
A 61-year-old man beaten into a coma by a hooded youth in the northern suburb of Stains died in hospital, according to his widow, who called for the aggressor to be"punished."
It was the first death recorded since the troubles began.
The government faced growing criticism for its inability to stop the violence, despite massive police deployment and calls for calm.
Vandals burned more than 1,400 vehicles, and clashes around the country left 36 police injured, setting a new high for overnight arson and violence since rioting started on Oct. 27, Michel Gaudin, director-general of the national police, told a news conference.
Apparent copycat attacks spread outside France for the first time, with five cars torched outside Brussels' main train station, police in the Belgian capital said.
Australia, Austria, Britain, Germany and Hungary advised their citizens to exercise care in France, joining the US and Russia in warning tourists to stay away from violence-hit areas.
TRAVEL ADVISORY
Taiwan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday raised the travel advisory to France to a "yellow light," meaning tourists and Taiwanese living in France should take extra precautions.
The mayhem started as an outburst of anger in suburban Paris housing projects and has fanned out nationwide among disaffected youths, mostly of Muslim or African origin, to become France's worst civil unrest in over a decade.
Attacks overnight Sunday to yesterday were reported in 274 towns, and police made 395 arrests, Gaudin said.
"This spread, with a sort of shock wave spreading across the country, shows up in the number of towns affected," Gaudin said, noting that the violence appeared to be sliding away from its flash point in the Parisian suburbs and worsening elsewhere.
It was the first time police had been injured by weapons' fire and there were signs that rioters were deliberately seeking out clashes with police, officials said.
Among the injured police, 10 were hurt by youths firing fine-grain birdshot in a late-night clash in the southern Paris suburb of Grigny, national police spokesman Patrick Hamon said. Two were hospitalized, but their lives were not considered in danger.
The unrest began Oct. 27 in the low-income Paris suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois, after the deaths of two teenagers of Mauritanian and Tunisian origin. The youths were accidentally electrocuted as they hid from police in a power substation. They apparently thought they were being chased.
All told, almost 4,900 cars have been burned since the rioting began and 1,200 suspects were detained at least temporarily, Gaudin said.
The growing violence is forcing France to confront long-simmering anger in its suburbs, where many Africans and their French-born children live on society's margins, struggling with high unemployment, racial discrimination and despair.
France, with some 5 million Muslims, has the largest Islamic population in Western Europe.
President Jacques Chirac, whose government is under intense pressure, promised stern punishment for those behind the attacks, making his first public comments Sunday since the riots started.
"The law must have the last word," Chirac said on Sunday after a security meeting with top ministers.
---Additional reporting by Chang Yun-ping
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