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Mobs arrested as rioters call for 'Sarko out'
Peter Allen in Paris30.01.09
AT least 30 alleged rioters were due in court today after serious disturbances brought chaos to Paris.
More than 22 police officers were injured during clashes on "Black Thursday" - 24 hours of strikes and demonstrations expressing anger at the global financial crisis.
This morning a mass clean-up operation was taking place around Opera, close to the Paris Ritz hotel.
The worst of the trouble broke out as darkness fell, with masked youths heading towards the Elysée Palace, official residence of President Nicolas Sarkozy and his wife Carla.
Police fired tear gas at rioters as they shouted "Sarko Resign", and hurled bricks from a building site.
They had gathered at Place de la Opera from 7pm, following a mass march against Mr Sarkozy's government.
Wheelie bins were set on fire, along with a number of cars, and the windows of banks and jewellery shops - which one demonstrator described as "symbols of capitalism" - were smashed.
Many of the skirmishes took place in Rue de la Paix, with arrests made throughout the night.
It was the ugliest disturbance in Paris since rioters protesting against employment laws clashed with police for five weeks in 2005.
This time militant groups had again threatened to hijack trade-union marches. All are against "Sarko", blaming him for France's economic and social woes.
Earlier yesterday, hundreds of thousands had protested peacefully all over France in the first strike in an industrialised nation since the global economic crisis began.
The strike was aimed at forcing the president and business leaders to do more to protect workers. Many had described it as the first major hurdle of Mr Sarkozy's under-fire administration, with philosopher Alain Badiou writing in Liberation newspaper: "My dream is that Sarkozy will be chased from office by the street."
Mr Sarkozy was said to have feared riots like those in May 1968 which came close to overthrowing President Charles de Gaulle.
A Paris policeman spokesman confirmed that 30 people had been charged with public order offences.
Reader views (6)
Sarkozy was elected to lead his country.Brown has no mandate:Mandelson is unelected.Both are unelectable and yet they linger on.
- P.Doff, filey uk
Nobby that's the trouble, Crash WON'T take any notice unless the same happens in the UK.
- Marianne, SW France
Its often the working class areas that mobs usually tear apart and trash, and they live there. Perhaps its to draw attention to the squalid conditions they are forced to live in.
- Dhanraj, Basildon Essex
For once the rich quarters, tue de la Paix, place Vendome were targeted ! Why should it always be the middle class and poorer arrondissements which suffer ?
Of course this violence is to be condemned, but ....
- Marie, paris france
Gordon Brown take note...
- Nobby Clark, Perth, the Scottish one
You see: an ugly mob is an ugly mob whether you replace your Monarch with a President or not!
- Roz, Chamonix, France - if it really matters!
