French police face 'permanent intifada'

On a routine call, three unwitting police officers fell into a trap. A car darted out to block their path, and dozens of hooded youths surged out of the darkness to attack them with stones, bats and tear gas before fleeing. One officer was hospitalized.

The recent ambush was emblematic of what some officers say has become a near-perpetual and increasingly violent conflict between police and gangs in tough, largely immigrant French neighborhoods that were the scene of a three-week paroxysm of rioting last year.

On Sunday, a band of about 30 youths, some wearing masks, forced passengers out of a bus in a southern Paris suburb in broad daylight Sunday, set it on fire, then stoned firefighters who came to the rescue, police said. No one was injured. Two people were arrested, one of them a 13-year-old, according to LCI television.

Ethnic integration and violence against police are both becoming issues in the campaign for the French presidency. Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, the leading contender on the right, said this month that those who do not love France do not have to stay, echoing a longtime slogan of the extreme-right National Front: "France, love it or leave it."

"First, it was a rock here or there. Then it was rocks by the dozen. Now, they're leading operations of an almost military sort to trap us," said Loic Lecouplier, a police union official in the Seine-Saint-Denis region north of Paris. "These are acts of war."

Sadio Sylla, an unemployed mother of three, watched the Oct. 13 ambush of the police patrol in Epinay-sur-Seine from her second-floor window. She, other witnesses and police union officials said up to 50 masked youths dashed out from behind trees.

One of the three officers needed 30 stitches to his face after being struck by a rock. On Saturday, five people were placed under investigation for attempted murder in relation to the ambush.

I thought they were just throwing rocks and stuff like that but they even have tear gas. Sounds like they are as well armed as the police in some instances and when they aren’t as well armed they use shear numbers to overpower the police and even the police think they are using military tactics.

Atleast French politicians are realising that Le Pen and the Front Nationale were right all along. It’s time for the French to vote for him in the next presidential election. I truly think that they have a chance of winning.

If Le Pen isn’t elected I honestly don’t think France will ever solve this. He is a hardliner and I am convinced he would solve it. I would send the troops in and lay down martial law in the areas where they are attacking police. I would then raid every house. If someone is found that had been rioting they would have a trial and if found guilty immediately deported.