"Youths" Marauding Through Paris Suburbs
Fri, Oct 27, 2006 at 3:21:49 pm
Two public buses torched in Paris suburb.
CLICHY-SOUS-BOIS, France - Police deployed 4,000 reinforcements as marauding youths torched at least two public buses Friday, the anniversary of the deaths of two teenagers that ignited weeks of riots in largely immigrant housing projects across France.
After the buses were burned, Paris’ transport authority curtailed bus service in the Seine-Saint-Denis region north of the capital, which is home to thousands of immigrants and their French-born children.
Thierre Ange, a 19-year-old witness, said four men attacked the bus, “made everyone get off, then they hit a woman and dragged out the bus driver by his tie” and torched the bus with a gasoline bomb in a bottle. The blackened carcass of another bus that was burned earlier stood across town in Le Blanc Mesnil.
The Associated Press imparts to us their received wisdom about the root causes of the intifada:
Flaming cars became a symbol of the rioting last year, which jolted France into recognizing a failure to give equal opportunities to many minorities — especially those of Arab and black African origin — and the country’s 5 million-strong Muslim population.