President Jacques Chirac will this morning authorise French prefects to establish curfews in the hope of stemming the violence that has engulfed France over the past 12 nights, prime minister Dominique de Villepin announced on television last night, writes Lara Marlowe in Paris.
As de Villepin outlined his plans, violence erupted in a suburb of the southwestern city of Toulouse, where police said youths set fire to a bus and 21 cars. At least two cars were set ablaze near Lille in the north, according to the Reuters news agency. Fourteen cars were on fire in the Yvelines district west of Paris and 17 in Seine-Saint-Denis, north of the capital, police said.
Rioting had reached unprecedented proportions overnight on Sunday, when 1,408 cars were torched and 400 young men were arrested across France, bringing the total to 4,700 vehicles destroyed and 1,200 people taken into custody since October 27th.
The riots also claimed their first fatality when Jean-Jacques Le Chenedec (61), a retired automobile worker who was beaten unconscious when he and a neighbour tried to put out a fire lit by rioters on Friday night, died in hospital. Residents of his town of Stains, north of Paris, held a silent protest march last night and his widow Nicole said she hoped her husband's death would be avenged.
Half of those arrested are minors, and police say they caught an 11-year-old child throwing a petrol bomb. Attacks were reported in 274 French towns and cities. The injured up to last night included 36 policemen, 10 with buckshot wounds, and a 13-month old baby, hospitalised after being hit in the head by a stone in an attack on a bus in a Paris suburb. Two churches were burned, in Lens in the north and Sète in the south.
The governments of the US, Britain, Germany, Russia, Japan, Australia and a half dozen other countries have warned citizens travelling to France to avoid troubled areas.
In what appear to be copycat crimes, at least 16 vehicles were burned in the German cities of Berlin and Bremen, and the Belgian capital Brussels, on Sunday.
"The violence we have seen these past few days is unacceptable," de Villepin said on the evening news.
He cited the killing of Mr Le Chenedec, the murder of another man who was killed by muggers who wanted his camera a few hours before the riots started on October 27th, and the burning of a handicapped woman who was unable to flee a bus targeted by rioters.
He said the violence was inexcusable and that the "response of the state will be firm and just".
His government has already deployed 8,000 police and gendarmes throughout France, de Villepin said, and he has called in 1,500 reinforcements. He has asked tribunals to judge accused rioters immediately.
De Villepin expressed support for his much criticised interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy, and said the government was united.
To fight the malaise of the banlieues (suburbs), he said he would strengthen the powers of mayors, and restore funding for local associations.
Some €310 million earmarked for immigrant suburbs had been axed from this year's budget. He also plans to make education a priority and promised to fight discrimination.