Rioting spreads to 300 towns

By Aussiegirl

The rioting and insurrection spreads while Chirac apologizes and becomes more conciliatory. We are witnessing the death by suicide of France. This should have been stopped on the first or second day at the latest with strict curfews and martial law.

BREITBART.COM - Just The News

Rioting by French youths spread to 300 towns overnight, and a 61-year- old man hurt in the violence died of his wounds, the first fatality in 11 days of unrest that has shocked the country, police said Monday.

After sundown, rioters in the southern French city of Toulouse set fire to a bus, then pelted police with Molotov cocktails and rocks, a local official said.

The rioters stopped the bus and ordered the driver to step out, then set the vehicle afire, said Francis Soutric, chief of staff at the regional prefecture in Toulouse. No passengers were inside. Clashes broke out when riot police arrived on the scene, and officers responded with tear gas bombs, he said.

As urban unrest was reported in neighboring Belgium and Germany, the French government faced growing criticism for its inability to stop the violence, despite massive police deployment and continued calls for calm. One riot-hit town in suburban Paris said it was preparing to enforce a curfew.

Meanwhile, governments worldwide urged their citizens to be careful in France.

President Jacques Chirac, in private comments more conciliatory than his warnings Sunday that rioters would be caught and punished, acknowledged that France has failed to integrate the French-born children of Arab and black African immigrants in poor suburbs who have been participating in the violence, according to Latvian President Vaira Vike-Freiberga, who met with the French leader on Monday.