France arrests 5 minors in firebombing
MARSEILLE, France --Police arrested five teenagers Tuesday on suspicion of links to the weekend firebombing of a city bus that left a young woman severely burned.
Meanwhile, the agency that oversees police conduct ordered an investigation into the injury of a 16-year-old during a Saturday night clash with police in the troubled Paris-area community of Clichy-sous-Bois, police said Tuesday. The young man was hospitalized with an eye injury, allegedly caused by a flashball, a hard rubber ball, fired by police.
Three weeks of fiery riots a year ago were sparked by the deaths of two youths electrocuted in a power substation while hiding from police in Clichy -- putting a spotlight on police conduct in the suburb.
Last year's violence spread to neglected housing projects nationwide and laid bare layers of discrimination against citizens of immigrant origin, mostly from former French colonies in African and Muslim North Africa.
In Marseille, police arrested five people, all between the ages of 15 and 17, in housing projects near the site of the Saturday night bus attack, the most vicious in a series of bus burnings around the Oct. 27 anniversary of the start of the riots.
Mama Galledou, a 26-year-old student of Senegalese origin, was burned over 62 percent of her body. She remained in a medically induced coma, a hospital statement said Tuesday.
While car torchings are a nightly occurrence in some rough neighborhoods in France, the brutality of the bus firebombing shocked politicians and the public.
More than a half-dozen buses have been targeted over the past few weeks. Except for the Marseille bus, the attackers first evacuated passengers.
President Jacques Chirac, in an interview published Tuesday in the daily Le Figaro, called for "firmness in the face of violence," along with promotion of equal opportunities for residents of the poor housing projects that ring France's big cities.
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Associated Press reporter Jean-Pierre Verges in Paris contributed to this report.
