FRENCH OFFICIALS ON EDGE AFTER SUBURB FLARES*

PARIS September 20, 2006 (IHT/AP) - A band of up to 30 youths** armed with makeshift weapons and some wearing masks attacked two riot police patrolling a housing project outside Paris in an apparent ambush that seriously injured one of the officers, police officials said Wednesday.

... One of the officers, who sustained a double skull fracture, was undergoing surgery Wednesday at a Paris hospital, a police official said. The other was released after treatment from a hospital in Evry.

The two were attacked by 20 to 30 youths** while patrolling in an unmarked car around a housing project known as a trouble spot in the town of Corbeil-Essonnes south of Paris, the police said. The youths** stoned the car, encircled the officers when they got out, then attacked, according to various accounts.

"The youths** were waiting in ambush in the woods and jumped out, their faces masked, to strike them with fists and pieces of wood," Joaquin Masanet, head of the UNSA-Police union, said in an interview. "The two officers had fallen into a trap and they were hitting them to kill."

The police were called in to disperse the gang but no arrests were made.

"We'll find them one by one," Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy vowed Wednesday, including, "every place in France where law enforcement officers are attacked." He also promised "extremely severe" punishment.

... Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin said the authorities would "draw the lessons" from the incident in Corbeil-Essonne, instituting "appropriate techniques to better anticipate risks" to the police.

Why does everything Dom says sound like a commercial for Zoloft?

The French authorities have kept a watchful eye on the suburbs surrounding big cities where most low-income housing projects are located, fearful of a new explosion of violence like the riots that erupted in poor housing projects nearly a year ago and continued for three weeks.

This is something new. The violence of last fall's riots was free-form and largely expended on cars. The recent violence in Corbeil-Essonnes was organized, it was targeted, and its intent lethal. And it has taken the fight directly to the police.

OUTRAGE IN FRANCE AFTER TWO POLICE AMBUSHED IN SUBURB

EVRY, France September 20, 2006 (AFP) - Police unions reacted with outrage Wednesday after two members of a CRS anti-riot unit were badly hurt in an ambush by youths** in the southern Paris suburb of Corbeil-Essonnes.

... The UNSA union said the officers were "victims of a genuine ambush by individuals whose sole aim was to attack the forces of law and order."

... The Synergie-Officier police union said it was "revolted by this savage attack .... These explosions of violence against the police are a kind of guerrilla warfare aimed at getting the forces of law and order to leave certain areas in order to immerse them in a logic of sedition and terror."

[The ambush] followed a stark warning about the risk of a new outbreak of suburban rioting in a letter [from June] published Tuesday from the [Préfet Jean-François Cordet] or state-appointed governor of the Seine-Saint-Denis department, centre of last year's disturbances...that tensions were continuing to rise in the northern Paris suburbs -- with rising crime, a court system that was failing to punish, and the active incitement of Islamic radicals.

The message from Corbeil-Essonne is plain enough, stay out of the ZNDs (Zones De Non Droit) where "youths" are the law.

* Absolutely no Muslims or maghrébins sighted during the writing of this report.

"Youths" is a masking term employed, we are asked to believe, because the Republic does not make distinctions among its citizens. Why, even "youths" is prejudicial. But the French use this masking term not out of deference to airy Republican impartiality. They use this term because they cannot bear to be reminded -- much less held to account -- for the underlying racism of the "very special movement" that plagues France.

PFFT (What is this?): Bracing for "youths" 3 | Rayonnement français 0