Five Parisian areas turned into no-go zones as rioters shout ‘Allahu Akbar’

Front National (FN) MP Marion Marechal-Le Pen tweeted the amateur video which shows chaotic scenes including of clouds of smoke after cars were set on fire and a man yelling “Allahu Akbar”, at least three times.

Law enforcement are having a difficult time to cope with the latest riots. Five large areas have been reduced to no go areas for the past five nights with masked men targeting police.

The French Government’s response to the latest outbreaks of violence is to put 2 600 cameras on police officers to record arrests, but the measure has done little to calm protesters.

Fears are rising that the allegations of police “brutality” could fuel more unrest in the rest of the country. Residents have been on lockdown as armed police tried to battle black and Arab rioters who have already caused millions of euros in damage.

“Several hundred violent and very mobile individuals” committed various “acts of violence and damage,” said the Paris police prefecture. In a statement it listed projectiles thrown against public buildings, four vehicles torched, two shops and a bus station damaged in one night alone.

Regional police said in a statement that 11 people including eight minors were arrested in Argenteuil, northwest of Paris, after the rioters set vehicles and rubbish bins on fire.

Police were hit with molotov cocktails and the heavy metal balls used in the French game Petanque. Officers have been forced to fire live rounds of bullets after an ambulance was set on fire, The Express reported.

A reporter for the French TV company BMTV was also injured after being attacked.

Bruno Le Roux, France’s interior minister, defended the police investigation of rape accusations by an alleged drug dealer called Theo. “I call for responsibility, serenity, and trust in the justice system,” he told reporters in televised remarks on Monday.

Marechal-Le Pen, Marine Le Pen’s niece, tweeted a video showing a patrol car reversing away from violent rioters at extreme speeds, followed by an angry mob. She accompanied the clip with the statement: “Faced with the violence of scum, our police officers are forced to back off. Hurry up Marine and restore order to #Bobigny!”

In another tweet she said that “Theo” is being used as an excuse to misbehave during the ongoing nights of violent clashes and a national controversy linked to claims by the 22-year-old Theo that he was sodomized with a police baton after being arrested on 2 February in Aulnay-sous-Bois. Three officers have been given preliminary charges.

Marechal-Le Pen also tweeted: “Rioters yelled “Allah Akbar” in Bobigny yesterday night”.

She said the real poverty in France was in the countryside and they don’t burn cars there. The FN has launched a petition in support of the police.

Marine Le Pen said it is shameful that Francois Hollande “has not condemned the violence and has neither taken action nor offered any support to law enforcement since yesterday”.

“There’s an almost permanent hostility against the police,” academic Christian Mouhanna from the state-funded CNRS research center told AFP. “This is just the highly mediatized tip of the iceberg.”

Thousands of police protested last October, holding up placards saying they were “Tired of being a target” after a firebomb attack on a patrol car south of Paris left a young officer with severe burns and in a coma.

Frederic Lagache, secretary general of the police union Alliance, denied that relations between immigrant communities and law enforcement were deteriorating. He said: “Relations between the police and the people are good, except where there’s criminality.”

Mass riots centered on the same area in the northern suburbs of Paris in 2005 and lasted for weeks. Aulnay-sous-Bois was one of several areas where riots erupted in 2005 after two teenagers who fled from police in the nearby neighborhood of Clichy-sous-Bois died from being accidentally electrocuted in a power station where they had hidden.

The then interior minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, was forced to declare a state of emergency.