Outside the Beltway

French Muslim Riots Claim First Fatality

James Joyner · Monday, November 7, 2005 · 1 comment

The rioting French Muslims have murdered one man and injured scores of others. Meanwhile, they are spawning copycats in other European cities.

French Rioting Worsens With First Fatality (AP)

A man who was beaten by an attacker while trying to extinguish a trash can fire during riots north of Paris has died of his injuries, becoming the first fatality since the urban unrest started 11 days ago, a police official said Monday. Youths overnight injured three dozen officers and burned more than 1,400 vehicles.

Apparent copycat attacks spread to other European cities for the first time, with five cars torched outside Brussels’ main train station, police in the Belgian capital said. Australia, Austria and Britain became the latest countries to advise their citizens to exercise care in France, joining the United States and Russia in warning tourists to stay away from violence-hit areas.

Alain Rahmouni, a national police spokesman, said the man who was beaten died at a hospital from injuries sustained in the attack, but he had no immediate details about the victim’s age or his attacker. The man was caught by surprise by an attacker after rushing out of his apartment building to put out the fire, Rahmouni said.

[…]

The growing violence is forcing France to confront long-simmering anger in its suburbs, where many Africans and their French-born children live on society’s margins, struggling with high unemployment, racial discrimination and despair – fertile terrain for crime of all sorts as well as for Muslim extremists offering frustrated youths a way out. France, with some 5 million Muslims, has the largest Islamic population in Western Europe.

Ugh.

via Glittering Eye