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Riots in Paris
More than 70 French police were injured in a second night of violence in suburbs north of Paris after angry youths threw stones and Molotov cocktails and fired guns at officers.
Five of 77 injured officers were said to be in a critical condition as the worsening riots spread to other suburbs.
One of the officers was shot in the shoulder by a hunting rifle. One journalist was also injured.
The riots were prompted by the death of two teenagers in a motorcycle accident involving a police car on Sunday in Villiers-le-Bel, an area dominated by public housing blocks.
Despite appeals for calm from the crash victims' families and from the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, last night's clashes were more violent than the previous night. The riots also spread to four other northern suburbs, with dozens of cars torched.
Many fear a repeat of the riots of late 2005, which also started in a Parisian suburb after the death of two youths, both accidentally electrocuted while fleeing police.
Last night's violence was even more intense than the three weeks of rioting two years ago, said police official Patrice Ribeiro.
Police are facing "genuine urban guerrillas with conventional weapons and hunting weapons," he told Associated Press. Youths were seen firing buckshot at police and reporters. Angry residents said the police left the scene of Sunday's crash without helping the two teenagers whose moped had collided with their car. Investigators were still trying to piece together what happened.
Police officials said the moped ignored traffic rules and crashed into the police vehicle, and that the bike was unregistered and thus not authorised for use on French roads. Neither of the riders - aged 15 and 16 - was wearing a helmet, and the prosecutor's office said the bike was going at top speed.
Omar Sehhouli, brother of one of the victims, told France Info radio: "This is a failure to assist a person in danger. It is 100 % a [police] blunder. They know it, and that's why they did not stay at the scene," he told France Info radio.
Sehhouli also told the news agency AFP that the rioting "was not violence but an expression of rage".
The internal police watchdog opened an inquiry into the deaths.
An alcohol test showed neither officer had been drinking and initial inquiries suggested they did not cause the crash, police said.
The prosecutor, Marie-Therese de Givry, told LCI television that the officers called rescue services to the scene.
The head of the opposition Socialist party, François Hollande, called the latest violence the result of "a social and political crisis" and lamented the "climate of suspicion, of hate, that can exist in many neighbourhoods".
"Promises were made. We want to see the results," Hollande said on France-Inter radio. "How long have we been talking about a 'plan for the suburbs?"'
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