Anniversary of French riots ignites fresh attacks

PARIS - Three buses were burned by gangs of youths on the outskirts of Paris in the lead-up to yesterday's anniversary of violent riots in poor French suburbs last year.

In one incident, a driver and his passengers were forced to leave a bus at gunpoint. The bus was then driven through a barrier into a housing estate and burned.

In two other attacks, on Wednesday night, passengers scrambled off buses after they were set alight with inflammable liquid or molotov cocktails.

The bus attacks, and another incident in which youths stoned cars on a busy dual carriageway south of Paris, suggest youth gangs are making a deliberate attempt to provoke new clashes with police.

One of the French internal security services, the Renseignements Generaux, has warned most of the conditions which produced "collective violence" in poor, multi-racial suburbs across France last year remained unchanged.

The majority of deprived housing estates around the capital - including those in Clichy-sous-Bois where last year's riots began - have been relatively calm.

The interior minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, instructed police to avoid entering the territory of youth gangs in the days approaching the anniversary. He has also criticised a series of "12 months on" articles and programmes in the French media as an invitation to resumed rioting.

But a heavy-handed police raid with racial overtones, in Evry south of Paris, appears to have been at least partially responsible for the bus burnings. Police entered a cafe on Monday and demanded to see the papers of the customers of African and North African descent.

Arguments broke out and police used tear gas and made several arrests. A bus was burned by youths in the nearby estate that night in retaliation for what they called an "attack on our fathers".

Last year's riots broke out after two youths, aged 17 and 15, were electrocuted in a power sub-station at Clichy-sous-Bois northeast of Paris while fleeing police. Over the next three weeks, car-burning and attacks on public buildings - by brown, black and white youths - spread.

The government has since promised investment in deprived estates and new measures to prevent job discrimination against people of Arab or black origin. Activists and social workers claim little has been done to rein in the casual racism of many police deployed in the suburbs.

- INDEPENDENT