Unrest spreads in France

Hit-and-run arson attacks escalated in poor Paris suburbs as the government met to work out a response to nine nights of urban violence that has spawned copycat unrest in major towns.

Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin summoned eight key ministers and a top Muslim official to his offices yesterday as he sought to chart an end to violence.

Overnight, rioters burnt almost 900 vehicles in the Paris region and large provincial cities like Bordeaux, Strasbourg, Pau, Rennes, Toulouse and Lille, the highest total since unrest sparked by the deaths of two youths apparently fleeing police.

The violence has been seen as the expression of pent-up anger by youths, many Muslims of North African and black African origin, at police treatment, racism, unemployment and their marginal place in French society.

"Violence is not a solution," Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, accused of stoking passions by calling troublemakers "scum", told reporters after the Villepin meeting.

After nine nights of wailing sirens, acrid smoke, stone-throwing and destruction, residents from all ethnic backgrounds are tiring of the unrest.

In Aulnay-sous-Bois, a rundown suburb of 80,000 inhabitants northeast of Paris, several thousand residents, some singing the national anthem, marched past burnt out vehicles behind a "No To Violence, Yes To Dialogue" banner.

Overnight, police arrested 258 suspects and drafted in a helicopter in the Paris region to film events. While fewer clashes with youths were reported, judicial officials said the unrest was being organised via the Internet and mobile phones.

Police appealed for witnesses in the petrol bomb attack on a bus that severely burnt a handicapped woman, and 200 people in Epinay-sur-Seine held a minute's silence for a photographer beaten to death in front of his family in a street robbery.

In Meaux, a town east of Paris whose mayor is government spokesman Jean-Francois Cope, youths threw petrol bombs at paramedics, whose patient was taken to hospital under police escort.

One police union spoke of "civil war spreading into all French ghettos", and said the government should decree a nightly curfew and send in troops to dissuade trouble-makers. The United States embassy in Paris has advised its citizens to avoid some Paris suburbs including Seine-Saint-Denis and Trappes.

Villepin, who cancelled a visit to Canada to tackle the violence, met residents from troubled neighbourhoods late on Friday as part of efforts to start a dialogue.

He is to publish an action plan for 750 tough districts by the end of the month.

The drawn-out crisis could yet hurt his political fortunes and those of Sarkozy, his rival to lead the right in 2007 presidential elections.

Sarkozy has courted Muslim opinion by urging a measure of positive discrimination and setting up a Council of Muslim Faith to represent France's five million-strong Muslim community.

But its leader, Dalil Boubakeur, urged a change in tone: "What I want from the authorities, from Mr Nicolas Sarkozy, the Prime Minister and senior officials are words of peace."

In spite of criticism of his language and hard-line stance, Sarkozy's popularity remains relatively high.

Some 57 per cent of French people overall, and 56 per cent of those living in suburbs, believe Sarkozy has a good image, according to a poll by Le Parisien daily released yesterday.

However, some 63 per cent of French people also believe Sarkozy sometimes uses shocking language for an interior minister, according to the same poll.