Paris – The violence in France’s poor suburban communities persisted in the south Sunday, with attackers ramming burning cars into a retirement home and a school in one town. Nationwide, however, the unrest that has gone on for 18 nights continued to subside.
National Police Chief Michel Gaudin described the drop as a “major lull” in the violence, despite scattered incidents of serious attacks.
The nation’s worst violence in nearly four decades has declined slowly over the last week since its ferocious peak on the previous weekend.
Residents and police said the unrest has been curbed in many areas with a combination of parental and community pressure on the youths involved, aggressive arrests by police and the imposition of curfews.
A poll published by Le Journal du Dimanche newspaper Sunday indicated that 71 percent of those surveyed do not believe President Jacques Chirac can resolve the social problems that fueled the riots.
The survey also showed that 25 percent of the respondents support the policies of Jean-Marie Le Pen, a politician who has capitalized on the violence to promote his National Front party’s “zero immigration” platform.
Some of the worst incidents over the weekend occurred in southern France.
In Carpentras, a town of 28,000 people in the Provence region, young men rammed burning cars into a retirement center and a school in separate attacks Saturday night. Police said no one was injured. On Friday night, a man on a motorcycle hurled two Molotov cocktails at a mosque, slightly damaging the building.
In the southeastern city of Lyon, France’s third-largest urban area, traces of gasoline were discovered Sunday on the exterior of the Grand Mosque, but no fire was reported, police said. About 50 young men and boys rampaged through the city’s main square Saturday night, attacking street vendors’ stalls, small shops and cars.
