France's government faced mounting pressure yesterday as suburban unrest took on dangerous new momentum, with shots fired at police and fire crews as they battled youths who torched car dealerships, public buses and a school.
Four shots were fired at police and fire officers in four different towns, without causing any injuries, said Jean-Francois Cordet, the top government official for the troubled Seine-Saint-Denis region north of Paris where the week of violence has been concentrated.
Rioters set fire to 315 cars in the Paris area overnight, half of them in Seine-Saint-Denis, where nine people were injured, officials said.
The heavy presence of armed riot police did little to deter violence as youths rampaged for a seventh straight night. Acts ranging from clashes with police to torching of vehicles were reported in at least 10 Paris-region towns.
The riots have highlighted the division between France's big cities and their poor suburbs. Frustrations have been simmering in housing projects to the north and northeast of Paris, heavily populated by North African and Muslim immigrants and their French-born children who struggle with high unemployment, crime, poverty and a lack of opportunities.
In the tough northeastern suburb of Aulnay-sous-Bois, gangs of youths torched a Renault car dealership and incinerated at least a dozen cars, a supermarket and a local gymnasium.
In nearby La Courneuve, two shots were fired at riot police, said Cordet. A third shot targeted firefighters in Noisy-le-Sec, and a forth was aimed at a fire crew in Saint-Denis, home to the Stade de France stadium that hosted the final of the 1998 soccer World Cup.
Bands of youths forced a team of France-2 television reporters out of their car in the suburb of Le Blanc Mesnil, then flipped the vehicle and set it on fire.
Unrest spilled over to public housing projects in the area, where police engaged in a cat-and-mouse game with youths, who would break car windows and toss petrol-bombs inside before running away.
Police in the Seine-Saint-Denis region detained 23 rioters on Wednesday night and have taken a total of 98 people into custody since the rioting started, Cordet said.
France's government was in crisis mode, with Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin calling a string of emergency meetings with government officials throughout the day yesterday.
One was a working lunch with Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, who has been accused of inflaming the crisis with his tough talk and police tactics. Sarkozy has called troublemakers "scum" and vowed to "clean out" troubled suburbs, language that some say further alienated their residents.
Minister of Social Cohesion Jean-Louis Borloo said the government had to react "firmly" but added that France must also acknowledge its failure to have dealt with anger simmering in poor suburbs for decades.
GET TO SAFETY: Authorities were scrambling to evacuate nearly 700 people in Hualien County to prepare for overflow from a natural dam formed by a previous typhoon Typhoon Podul yesterday intensified and accelerated as it neared Taiwan, with the impact expected to be felt overnight, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said, while the Directorate-General of Personnel Administration announced that schools and government offices in most areas of southern and eastern Taiwan would be closed today. The affected regions are Tainan, Kaohsiung and Chiayi City, and Yunlin, Chiayi, Pingtung, Hualien and Taitung counties, as well as the outlying Penghu County. As of 10pm last night, the storm was about 370km east-southeast of Taitung County, moving west-northwest at 27kph, CWA data showed. With a radius of 120km, Podul is carrying maximum sustained
President William Lai (賴清德) yesterday criticized the nuclear energy referendum scheduled for Saturday next week, saying that holding the plebiscite before the government can conduct safety evaluations is a denial of the public’s right to make informed decisions. Lai, who is also the chairman of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), made the comments at the party’s Central Standing Committee meeting at its headquarters in Taipei. ‘NO’ “I will go to the ballot box on Saturday next week to cast a ‘no’ vote, as we all should do,” he said as he called on the public to reject the proposition to reactivate the decommissioned
US President Donald Trump on Friday said that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) told him China would not invade Taiwan while Trump is in office. Trump made the remarks in an interview with Fox News, ahead of talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin over Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. “I will tell you, you know, you have a very similar thing with President Xi of China and Taiwan, but I don’t believe there’s any way it’s going to happen as long as I’m here. We’ll see,” Trump said during an interview on Fox News’ Special Report. “He told me: ‘I will never do
EXCEPTIONS: Some people could be allowed to reclaim citizenship for humanitarian reasons or because of their contributions to the nation, the interior ministry said Taiwan would soon unveil new rules banning Taiwanese residents of China from reclaiming their citizenship if they participated in Beijing’s propaganda activities, the Ministry of the Interior said on Monday. The measures were drafted following President William Lai’s (賴清德) March 13 directive that the government counter China’s espionage and influence campaigns aimed at undermining Taiwan’s sovereignty, the ministry said in a preview of the rules. The changes would affect Taiwanese who lost their citizenship after becoming permanent residents of China or obtaining passports issued by China, it said. Under the measures, former Taiwanese nationals living in China who had made statements denying the
RSS