Michel Euler/Associated Press
A helicopter flew Tuesday night over some of the 1,000 police officers deployed in Villiers-le-Bel.
NYT:
The onetime rock throwers and car burners have taken up hunting shotguns and turned them on the police.
More than 100 officers have been wounded, several of them seriously, according to the police. Thirty were hit with buckshot and pellets from shotguns, and one of the wounded was hit with a type of bullet used to kill large game, Patrice Ribeiro, a police spokesman, said in a telephone interview. One of the officers lost an eye; another’s shoulder was shattered by gunfire.
It is legal to own a shotgun in France — as long as the owner has a license — and police circles were swirling with rumors that the bands of youths were procuring more weapons.
“This is a real guerrilla war,” Mr. Ribeiro told RTL radio, warning that the police, who have struggled to avoid excessive force, will not be fired upon indefinitely without responding.
The police have made more than 30 arrests but have been restrained in controlling the violence, using tear gas to disperse the bands of young people and firing paint balls to identify people for possible arrests later.
Foto: AP (Europa Press).
La policía además insiste en que si en 2005 no estaban organizados, ahora sí lo están h/t Noisy Room.Net.
ABC.es añade algo importante como resumen de los dos primeros días de violencia:
[La tercera noche] no ha habido enfrentamientos directos destacables entre grupos de jóvenes y la policía, contrariamente a la noche anterior, cuando 82 agentes resultaron heridos, 10 de ellos por impactos de armas de fuego, en una escalada de la violencia que sembró la alarma entre los agentes y las autoridades. La primera noche de los disturbios, 40 policías habían sido heridos, incluido un comisario apaleado con barras de hierro.
Tanto ha preocupado a las autoridades que se han llegado a hacer peticiones, cuando menos, extraordinarias:
Michèle Alliot-Marie [Ministra de Interior] pidió a la población que ayude a las fuerzas del orden a "aislar a los delincuentes que se aprovechan de la situación para destrozar y saquear".
Se supone que la población ayuda a las fuerzas del orden y si se hacen este tipo de peticiones es porque la policía considera que no se le ayuda. Entonces habrá que preguntarse por qué.
Parece ser que sólo el amplio dispositivo policial ha hecho que remitieran los disturbios.
Como siempre, la cobertura informativa es penosa. Bookworm Room ironiza sobre cómo lo están tratando los medios ingleses h/t American Thinker:
So, both at home and abroad, the MSM narrative is as follows: Young people are rioting in Paris and, in true “if it bleeds it leads” tradition, the news reports will happily tell you that they’re organized, they’re armed, and they’re incredibly aggressive, so much so that scores of police have been injured, and we’re not even talking property damage. If you insist on knowing more about who these people are, we’ll hint that they’re friends of youths of ethnic descent, and that they live in neighborhoods that have primarily Arab and African immigrants and their children.
If you suspect that part of the problem might be that these Arab and African immigrants are Muslim, please be assured that you are wrong. In the ponderous language of social scientists, the reporters will assure you that the riots/unrest/guerrilla warfare problem is entirely due to (1) the government’s treating these youths badly and (2) the fact that it emerged after last year’s riots that the police might have lied about their run-in with two of these same types of youths.
Pero es que lo mismo exactamente se puede decir de los medios españoles.
Si ayer quemaron un gimnasio, hoy han quemado una biblioteca con todos sus libros dentro h/t Mad Minnerva:
A resident looks at the Louis Jouvet local library which was torched during recent riots. (By Charles Platiau, Reuters).
Mad Minnerva writes:
They burned it and destroyed all its books. Now this incident is almost symbolic of what's going on overall: blind hatred and violence are ruling the day, and they don't care if they destroy the fruits of human learning, teaching, research, and literature. A library is a tiny symbol, a minute bastion, of the idea that learning is important, that literature and research are important, that the sharing of those things is important. A library is a tiny symbol of culture and civilization -- and of respect and love for those things.
DE Times On Line:
President Sarkozy moved quickly today to take charge of France's latest episode of ethnic rioting after a heavy police operation averted serious incidents on the third night of unrest in the northern Paris outskirts.
Arriving on an overnight flight from Beijing, Mr Sarkozy went straight to two hospitals to visit the dozen police officers and firemen who were seriously injured - some by shotgun blast - on Sunday and Monday night.
"Super Sarko", who built his reputation as a tough Interior Minister for four years before his elections last spring, promised no mercy for the youths who rampaged for two nights through the streets of Villiers-le-Bel and neighbouring towns near Charles de Gaulle Airport.
"Those who take it upon themselves to shoot at police will find themselves in the Assizes Court," Mr Sarkozy said. Shooting at police "has a name - attempted murder", he added.
Mr Sarkozy then met the families of two teenage boys whose deaths on Sunday in a collision with a police car sparked the Villiers riots. He promised them that a judicial inquiry would be opened to determine the precise events surrounding the accident, in which the teenagers' motorcycle collided with the three-man patrol car. An initial investigation has confirmed the police version of Sunday's deaths, according to which the two teenagers - aged 15 and 16 - sped into an intersection, unlicensed and not wearing helmets.
The families, originally from Morocco and Mali, were invited to the Elysée Palace, where Mr Sarkozy "showed sympathy and listened to them for a long time", said their lawyer. The president called a special ministerial session on the riots and was due to promise a fierce police response to law-breakers at a speech to officers later in the day. It remained uncertain whether he would visit the scene of the violence. His presence would reassure police and many local residents, but it would also provoke the youths who see "Sarko" as their enemy.
Time cita a un "analista político" que duda de que la intervención de Sarkozy de apoyo total a la policía haya sido la mejor, porque según él "si los disturbios vuelven a aparecer mucha gente le echará la culpa":
"No one has any sympathy for the thugs behind these riots, but Sarkozy might have been wiser to show his support of the police in a lower-profile manner. Whether it's fair to do so or not, were rioting to break out again now, lots of people would hold him partly responsible for that."
No entiendo este razonamiento: si a la gente no les gusta lo que los jóvenes que provocan los disturbios hacen, ¿por qué el apoyo de Sarkozy a la policía iba a determinar que fuera él el culpable de una reinicio de los desórdenes?
Incurre además en un grave error el artículo. Dice que Sarkozy:
was seen using racially loaded terms to denounce project hooligans just days before the riots exploded in 2005.
fue visto usando términos con fuerte carga racial para denunciar a los hooligans días antes de que explotaran los disturbios en 2005. Eso no es cierto: lo que hizo fue llamar "racaille" a los que participaron en los disturbios, que es un sinónimo de "scum" y que puede traducirse como "canalla", término que se usa de modo peyorativo para los que se dedican a cometer crímenes menores.
La última noticia es que hay un videoaficionado que parece que contradice el testimonio de la policía en el choque con los dos jóvenes.
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