The start of violence today came during Sunday afternoon just before the Presidential Cabinet crisis meeting at the Elysees Palace.
A City Hall annex building in Orléans and a police car were targeted by stone throwers. City Hall windows in the Argonne area of Orléans were smashed and a police patrol attacked by rock throwers.
Sunday afternoon a bus was torched in Saint-Etienne injuring two people (the bus driver and a passenger). Passengers were ordered out by a gang of youths but the bus was tocrched before everyone could get out. French TV reports that all bus transportation in Saint-Etienne is now halted.
French countryside under attack
As reinforcements are called into Paris, other French cities are seeing stepped up attacks. Authorities are not stating where reinforcements to Paris are coming from in order to not encourage attacks in other areas of France (now understaffed).
Attackers are more and more mobile and quickly adapting to police tactics.
SOS Racisme (left wing rabble rousing group close to the Socialist Party) made a statement denouncing media sensationalism which is, according to them, creating a false impression about the riots (they're not so bad, really) and playing into the hands of the extreme-right National Front. SOS Racisme insists that young French who kick people to death and torch the handicapped are not animals or savages. Their negative portrayal in the media will only humiliate them further. Please understand their despair.
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