The New Nation - Internet Edition

Reuters, Paris

The number of police officers injured in clashes in Paris suburbs overnight reached about 60, police said on Tuesday, after a second night of violence. Police officers were hit with stones, petrol bombs and firecrackers that exploded over their heads during hours of skirmishes with rioters in the northern suburb of Villiers-le-Bel and nearby areas. The violence followed the deaths of two youths in a crash involving a police car. It revived memories of 2005 riots in France's poor, often ethnically diverse, housing estates. Despite appeals for calm from the crash victims' families, rioters torched a library, a tax office and damaged dozens of shops and businesses, police said.