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PARIS, Nov. 5 (Xinhuanet) -- Two warehouses in Seine-Saint-Denis, two other
buildings in the suburb of Val d'Oise, and over 120 vehicles nationwide were set
ablaze in France as the nation's worst unrest in decades dragged into the ninth
day on Friday.
Firemen rushed to Val d'Oise to extinguish blazes on more than ten cars and
two buildings, while flames flared up Friday in several other locations despite
heavy police deployment.
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| A car burns during a riot in the Paris suburb of Le Blanc-Mesnil Nov. 3. (Reuters) More photos
| At least 78 people have been captured overnight on Thursday around the
suburban regions of Paris, the French National Police General Direction said
Friday.
Days of arson attacks also put the authorities on fire. The French
Communist Party on Friday urged Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy to step down,
saying his policy is "a total failure."
"The interior minister's policy, recycling ideas of the far-right is more than
a total failure: it stirs all the tensions and generates the results strictly
contrary to what it pretends to obtain," the party said.
The party also called on the French government to
recognize its failure in public and decide a radical change of its public
security policy.
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| Smoke rises from a blazing
warehouse fire near Le Bourget during an 9th night of unrest in the
suburbs, northeast of Paris Nov.
5. (Reuters) |
While determined to restore order and justice, Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin
has acknowledged that people living in high-immigrant areas need security,
recognition, hope, respect and future, promising further help with the
youths in those areas in seeking jobs.
The government has also presented an initial report on an investigation
into the deaths of the two teenagers, identified respectively as Bouna Traore,
15, born in Mauritania, and Zyed Benna, 17, of Tunisian origin.
Violence was sparkled by the accidental deaths of the two teenagers last
week in Seine-Saint-Denis in northeast Paris, an area which is home to many poor
Muslim immigrants from North Africa.
The two victims scaled the wall of an electrical relay station to flee a
police identity check and were electrocuted near a transformer.
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| Firemen confront a blazing
warehouse fire near Le Bourget Nov. 4.
(Reuters) | Young people in the suburban areas went on a rampage at the two deaths,
while some others from the high-immigration neighborhoods joined in, protesting
unemployment and other problems.
Riots first began in Seine-Saint-Denis, and have spread to areas
surrounding Paris before flaring up also in Marseille, Dijonand in Normandy --
and even in central parts of the capital itself.
Heavy police deployment has seemed to be doing little help in quenching out
the flames. Some 1,300 police officers have been sent to Seine-Saint-Denis, the
place worst hit by the violence.
According to police estimates, over 1,260 vehicles have so far been torched and
more than 200 people arrested amid fears that the country's racial and social
divisions were fueling the violence, the worst seen since a 1968 student revolt.
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