As Youth Riots Spread Across France, Muslim Groups Attempt to Intervene

The riots have not touched popular tourist sites in Paris. But the road and rail line that many foreign visitors use to travel between the city and Charles de Gaulle International Airport slice through the most troubled districts.

Two trains connecting Paris and the airport were attacked Thursday, prompting engineers to run only one in five trains on Friday, rail officials said. The U.S. Embassy warned travelers Friday against taking trains to the airport, calling conditions in the troubled areas "extremely violent."

Almost every exit sign off the A1 highway to the airport identifies a town that has been the scene of nightly attacks.

Just off the highway, in Aulnay-sous-Bois, a businessman in a gray suit on Friday picked through the rubble of a Renault car dealership that is now a blackened hulk, its shattered showroom windows exposing the charred frames of latest-model automobiles.

The next exit pointed to Le Blanc-Mesnil, where 17-year-old Geraldine Marie-Reine stood gazing at the ruins of the community gymnasium where she played as a child. "It's a public place," said Marie-Reine, who was born in the West Indies. "It belongs to everybody."

She said some of the youths who burned the building were former classmates who had also played there as children. "I know them," she said. "Seeing it destroyed by other youths hurts."

She narrowed her eyes at two teenage boys who sauntered past. She nodded, silently mouthing the French word for "them."

Nearer the airport, black smoke mixed with low-hanging gray clouds as firefighters battled a blaze set 13 hours earlier at a warehouse filled with paint, flooring and wall materials.

In Sevran, about halfway between Paris and the airport, Muslim leaders have been meeting inside a former supermarket that is now the Grand Mosque of Sevran. There, they are plotting a strategy to curb the violence in a town of 47,000 people where a large percentage of the population is Muslim.

Bekkay Merzak, secretary general of the Sevran Muslim Cultural Association, said he feared the rioting was damaging the image of Muslims generally. The rampaging youths are "harming Islam and themselves," Merzak said. "They don't know their own religion."

Each day, Merzak dispatches a cadre of young volunteers door to door to plead the association's case: Young people, stay away from the violence; parents, keep your children in the house at night.

"I talk about how our religion condemns these acts," said Amin Benabderradname, 25, who had a thick black beard and wore an embroidered white cap on his shaved head. During his rounds on Wednesday, he said, he encountered several teenagers filling two large sacks with rocks for the coming night. Benabderradname said he persuaded them to surrender their weapons to him.

Many youths in Sevran and elsewhere have pursued a dangerous nightly game of hide-and-seek with police officers and firefighters. Police said the attackers' tactics began shifting Thursday night, with fewer incidents of large gangs confronting police and more incidents of small, fast-moving teams setting fires.

Sevran residents said the attackers would ignite one car, and then, before firefighters could douse the flames, move on to torch another vehicle several streets away. Their mobility leaves remnants of destruction scattered throughout the city.

Muslim leaders who have been talking with young rioters say that many are driven by anger at the government over the neglect of the housing projects, where unemployment and crime are rampant. A statement by Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy that rioters were "scum" particularly incensed many of them.

They are also frustrated at job and social discrimination against the neighborhoods' residents, many of whom were born in France to immigrant parents.

While many residents share the indignation of the young people, they are expressing increasing anger at what the rioters are doing. Many of the burned-out cars and businesses are owned by local people. The loss of government facilities lowers the quality of life.

"Fed up!" read the headline in Friday's suburban editions of the newspaper Le Parisien. Religious, business, civic and government leaders in several of the hardest-hit towns, including Sevran, are planning demonstrations this weekend to protest the violence and appeal to the youths to stop.