Last year on Thursday, October 27, people took to the streets to protest at the deaths of two Muslim youths. Two days earlier, three youths in the northeastern Paris suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois saw a group of police, and ran. The police, who were questioning a group of other youths who had broken into a building site, denied that they had given chase to the three Muslim youths. The three climbed an eight foot wall, to hide inside an electricity sub-station. They hid inside a turbine. As a result, all three became electrocuted. Two of the youths, 17-year old Ziad Benna and 15-year old Banou Traoré died, and the third, Metin, was hospitalized.
What followed was the worst rioting that Paris had seen since the 1960s. By the time the civil unrest had officially ended on November 21, more than 9,000 vehicles had been incinerated, along with countless garbage bins. Hundreds of police and firefighters had been injured. Some had been shot. Public buildings, including synagogues and Jewish schools had been burned by the predominantly Muslim rioters.
The riots had spread within the first fortnight to include several other towns, including Dijon, Amiens, Arras, Lille, Brest and Toulouse. Imitations of the rioting had taken place in Belgium, in Antwerp and Ghent. A church had been set on fire in Drome in the south of France, and at least two mosques had been attacked in retaliation. The worst incident occurred when a 56-year old disabled woman was set alight on a bus in Paris within the first week of the disturbances. She had petrol poured on her, and received 20% burns.
Since then, there have been threats of a resurgence of the civil unrest. On May 29, riots broke out in the suburb of Montfermeil, Paris. About 100 youths armed with sticks and baseball bats fought police and tried to attack the home of the mayor, Xavier Lemoine. In April, Lemoine had introduced anti-hoodlum measures, prohibiting gatherings of more than three youths at any one time in the town center of Montfermeil. The youths shook the gates of his home and smashed windows. The rioting continued for another night, and then died down.
On Tuesday, September 17 youths ambushed a riot police (Compagnies Republicaines de Securite, or CRS) vehicle in Corbeil-Essonnes in the southeast of Paris, as they patrolled the Les Tartarets housing project. The two people from the vehicle were beaten and one (pictured) was hospitalized.
On Sunday, October 1 seven police officers were injured in clashes with youths in Les Mureaux, in the western outskirts of Paris.
On October 5, the Telegraph reported that the head of a police union, "Action Police", stated that: "We are in a state of civil war, orchestrated by radical Islamists. This is not a question of urban violence any more, it is an intifada, with stones and Molotov cocktails. You no longer see two or three youths confronting police, you see whole tower blocks emptying into the streets to set their 'comrades' free when they are arrested."
"We need armoured vehicles and water cannon. They are the only things that can disperse crowds of hundreds of people who are trying to kill police and burn their vehicles."
On October 13 at Epinay-sur-Seine, another Parisian suburb, another police patrol was ambushed by youths wearing masks. three police were subjected to the attack. One needed 30 stitches to his facial injuries after being struck by a rock. In Aulnay-sous-Bois on October 20, two police vehicles were attacked with stones, iron bars and molotov cockt
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