Youths riot in Paris rail station

Youths riot in Paris rail station

The 32-year-old assailant had a police record with 22 different cases listed on it, Interior Minister Francois Baroin told Europe-1 radio.

The routine check "got out of hand and transformed into urban guerrilla warfare, into unacceptable, intolerable violence," said Baroin, who started his job as interior minister Monday after Nicolas Sarkozy stepped down to concentrate on his presidential bid.

"Nothing can justify what happened yesterday at Gare du Nord."

The violence did not appear directly related to France's presidential election, taking place in less than four weeks, but it highlighted the social and economic tensions that the country's new leader will inherit when he or she takes power after the April 22-May 6 two-round vote.

Lines from Gare du Nord radiate out to the same suburbs north of Paris where rioting erupted in 2005. That violence was born of pent-up anger -- especially among youths of immigrant origin -- over years of high unemployment and racial inequalities. Those issues have both figured in the presidential campaign.

Many candidates have warned that violence still simmers in France's troubled suburbs and that it could flare up at any time. Socialist candidate Segolene Royal, just behind leader Sarkozy in the polls, said last week that "fire is still smoldering under the ashes in the suburbs."

Some youths at Gare du Nord station contradicted the official version of events, saying the incident started when officers manhandled a youth of North African origin. Some claimed that the youth's arm was broken in the confrontation.

Officers and police dogs charged at groups of marauding youths, some of them wearing hoods, who mingled with commuters and travelers. Youths threw trash cans and other objects at officers and set fire to an information booth.

One woman was evacuated by paramedics for tear-gas inhalation. Groups of dazed tourists and commuters negotiated overturned garbage cans and downed potted plants, dragging their bags over the glass-strewn floors.

Youths broke windows of a sports-goods store, reaching through the shattered glass to grab boxes of shoes. Passers-by also joined in the looting.

A Paris city hall official said about 100 people were involved in the violence late Tuesday evening. Hundreds of others milled around the station, watching the pandemonium.