French police tighten security after second night of riots

VILLIERS-LE-BEL: French police beefed up security Tuesday after a second night of riots in flashpoint suburbs north of Paris despite the launch of a judicial probe into the deaths of two teens that sparked the violence.   

A helicopter hovered early Tuesday over the town of Villiers-le-Bel, 20 kilometres (12 miles) north of the French capital "to locate people stirring up trouble," a police officer said.   

Riots intensified on Monday in the town and in neighbouring areas, police said. Violence erupted in Villiers-le-Bel on Sunday just after two teenagers died when their motorbike crashed into a police ca sparking six hours of clashes.   

Late Monday, some 100 angry youths crouching behind trash cans in Villiers-le-Bel hurled objects at 160 riot police who responded with rubber bullets and teargas.    

Young rioters in other towns were armed with Molotov cocktail bombs,  bottles filled with acid and baseball bats, police said.   

After Sunday's first night of unrest, President Nicolas Sarkozy had appealed for calm with France fearful of a repeat of nationwide violence that gripped the country in 2005 following the deaths of two youths fleeing the police.   

But this was to no avail as police Monday said up to 30 personnel were injured and 63 vehicles and five buildings had been set ablaze in six towns in the wider Val d'Oise area.   

"One policeman was wounded in the shoulder after being hit by a high calibre bullet," a security official said, adding that "however, no vital organ was affected."   

On Monday, a bus, which had no passengers on board at the time, and a lorry were set alight respectively in nearby Longjumeau and Grigby, police sources said.   

In Villiers-le-Bel, a pre-school, a driving school and a beauty salon were also set ablaze, witnesses said, while youths stoned a police car and a fire engine as well as looting another vehicle and causing further damage.   

Speaking earlier on a trip to Beijing, Sarkozy called for "all sides to calm down and for the judiciary to decide who bears responsibility".   

State prosecutor Marie-Therese Givry ordered an internal police investigation for "involuntary manslaughter and failure to assist persons in danger" following the deaths of the two teenagers.   

But speaking later to reporters, she said witnesses had confirmed the police officers' version according to which the bike smashed into the side of their car during a routine patrol. Neither youth was wearing a helmet.   

But Omar Sehhouli, brother of one of the victims, accused police of ramming the motorbike and of failing to assist the teens.   

"This is a failure to assist a person in danger... it is 100-percent a   (police) blunder. They know it, and that's why they did not stay at the scene," he told France Info radio.   

Sehhouli said the rioting "was not violence but an expression of rage."   

Police made nine arrests Sunday as rioters torched a police station, two garages, a petrol pump and two shops, and pillaged the railway station in neighbouring Arnouville. Some 40 police were reported injured.   

The police union Alliance offered its condolences to the victims' families, but said it was "unacceptable for a gang of delinquents to use this tragedy as an excuse to set the town on fire."   

Police and politicians warn the French suburbs remain a "tinderbox" two years after the 2005 riots, which exposed France's failure to integrate its large black and Arab population, the children and grandchildren of immigrants from its African colonies.