Violence spreads to several Paris suburbs

PARIS, Wednesday (AFP) Gangs of youths in towns around Paris clashed with police and torched cars and trash cans overnight as violence that has plagued one poor suburb for almost a week spread around the French capital, police and local authorities said Wednesday.

The epicentre of the trouble, which first erupted last Thursday following the deaths of two teenagers, is the poor northeastern suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois in the Seine-Saint-Denis department.

Police sources reported some 60 vehicles torched throughout the Seine-Saint-Denis area overnight. In the towns of Aulnay-sous-Bois and Sevran, gangs of stone-throwing youths were met by police firing disabling rubber 'flash-balls' to disperse them.

"It's a rough night," a departmental spokesman said.

There was less trouble overnight in Clichy-sous-Bois itself - which has a large immigrant and Muslim population - partly due to the heavy police presence there.

But more worryingly for the security forces, there were pockets of similar trouble for the first time in several other departments ringing Paris. Cars were torched and police reported sporadic incidents involving groups of youths in Val-d'Oise to the north of the capital and Seine-et-Marne to the southeast with lesser violence reported in Yvelines to the west.

French government leaders came under fire Tuesday for their handling of the unrest. The main opposition Socialists accused President Jacques Chirac and Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin of an "inexcusable" silence over the violence.

But most of their anger was directed toward Nicolas Sarkozy, the ambitious interior minister and would-be president, whose tough rhetoric on urban crime has aroused charges of pandering to the far right.

"When an interior minister doesn't hesitate to use insulting terms, branding as 'rabble' communities which have the misfortune to be fragile and wanting to turn water-cannon on them, it is the image of the country that is tarnished," the Socialist Party said in a statement.

Sarkozy, who is also leader of France's ruling UMP party, vowed to wage a "war without mercy" on crime in the Paris suburbs a week before the rampages began.