FRANCE: It was here, in the Chêne Pointu housing estate where Ziad Benna and Bouna Traore lived, that the violence started eight days ago, after the boys, aged 17 and 15, were electrocuted in a power substation.
A group of young Frenchmen of Arab origin who described themselves as "sympathisers and spectators" of the past week's riots predicted they will continue.
"The police have to admit what they did," said Ayoub (18), reiterating the widespread belief that police "killed" the two youths by knowingly leaving them to die. "Everything that's happened here has been to avenge those two kids."
"It's become a kind of competition between the different cités [housing estates] and neighbourhoods," Ali (18), said of the violence. "They're all trying to outdo each other now."
The previous night, from Wednesday to Thursday, was the most violent yet, with rioting in 20 towns in the Seine-Saint-Denis department, despite the deployment of 1,000 riot police, and violence in three other departments in the Paris region. Interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy announced that 41 men were arrested on Wednesday night, out of 143 the whole week.
In Aulnay-sous-Bois, adjacent to Clichy, young men set fire to the Renault dealership with petrol bombs. It took 100 CRS riot police to protect the 60 firemen who were unable to extinguish the fire before the roof collapsed.
A local police station, which closes at night because of its proximity to the volatile "Cité des 3000", was broken into by rioters and sacked. Young men seized a car from a French television crew, used it to crash into a bank and then burned it.
In La Courneuve, another suburb in Seine-Saint-Denis, authorities said four live rounds were fired at riot police. The only serious injury of the night was a CRS hit in the hand by a petrol bomb.
Some 50 young men, many of them wearing ski masks, attacked the Bobigny 2 shopping centre with iron bars. Bus shelters and phone booths were destroyed in the same area.
In Blanc-Mesnil, the 251 bus was forced to stop before a barricade of rubbish bins. After the terrified driver and passengers got it, the bus was burned. Two primary school rooms and a gymnasium also burned.
The Paris to Roissy airport line was shut down yesterday morning, after rioters attacked two trains.
In a post-midnight visit to Seine-Saint-Denis police headquarters at Bobigny, Mr Sarkozy said he had "felt this coming for several months".
His resignation is now demanded by rioters as a condition for stopping the violence.
The renseignements généraux, France's domestic intelligence service, has reported 70,000 incidents of urban violence since last January, including 28,000 burned cars and 17,500 burned rubbish bins.
"France is on fire," was the headline of the tabloid France Soir yesterday. Other publications compared the riots to the events of May 1968 or the Palestinian Intifada.
Nathalie Auréoli, spokeswoman for the SGPFO police union, said, "The police are tired, but they're not ready to give up an inch of territory. The situation is seriously degenerating. We need reinforcements." Another police union has called for a curfew
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin held a series of emergency meetings, including with the mayors of the blighted banlieues (suburbs). He and Mr Sarkozy have been severely criticised for appearing to allow their political rivalry to affect their management of the crisis.
Earlier in the week, officials of Arab origin, one loyal to the prime minister, the other loyal to the interior minister, traded barbed comments. However, the two teamed up in the French Senate yesterday to announce that restoring order was their "absolute priority".
Mr de Villepin has appeared to favour a more socially oriented strategy, Mr Sarkozy the use of force. "These ministers appeared more interested in their own battles than those that sow trouble in the lives of hundreds of thousands of inhabitants of the banlieues," Libération newspaper accused. The rapport between the two right-wing leaders was reportedly "glacial" in a crisis meeting at the prime minister's office on Wednesday.