First Week
- Thursday, October 27 - 1st night of rioting
- Gangs, mostly consisting of hundreds of youths, clashed with police, throwing rocks and Molotov cocktails at police forces and firefighters, setting cars on fire, and vandalizing buildings. A shot was reportedly fired at police.
- Police fired tear gas at the rioters. About 27 people were detained. 17 police officers and 3 journalists were wounded. The number of rioters and bystanders injured is not known.
- Friday, October 28 - 2nd night of rioting
- Rioters in Clichy-sous-Bois apparently set more than 30 cars alight and made barricades of those cars, along with dustbins, which firefighters worked to clear away.
- At least 200 riot police and crowds of young rioters clashed in on-and-off, running battles, on the night of the 28th and the early morning of the 29th.
- Saturday, October 29 - 3rd night of rioting
- About 500 people took part in a silent march through Clichy-sous-Bois, in memory of the teenagers. Representatives of the Muslim community appealed for calm and dignity at the procession. Marchers wore t-shirts printed with the message mort pour rien "dead for nothing".
- Sunday, October 30 - 4th night of rioting
- A tear gas grenade was launched into the mosque of the Cité des Bousquets, on what for Muslims is the holiest night of the holy month of Ramadan. Police denied responsibility but acknowledged that it was the same type used by French riot police. Speaking to 170 police officers at Seine-Saint-Denis prefecture in Bobigny (the local authority overseeing Clichy-sous-Bois), Nicolas Sarkozy said, "I am, of course, available to the Imam of the Clichy mosque to let him have all the details in order to understand how and why a tear gas bomb was sent into this mosque." Eyewitnesses also reported that police called women emerging from the mosque "whores" and other names .
- Monday, October 31 - 5th night of rioting
- It was reported that the rioting had spread to other parts of Seine-Saint-Denis. In nearby Montfermeil, the municipal police garage was set on fire.
- Michel Thooris, an official of police trade union Action Police CFTC (who only represents a minority of the police civil servants), described the unrest as a "civil war" and called on the French Army to intervene.
- Tuesday, November 1 - 6th night of rioting
- Rioting had spread to nine other suburbs, across which 69 vehicles were torched.
- A total of 150 arson attacks on garbage cans, vehicles and buildings were reported.
- The unrest was particularly intense in Sevran, Aulnay-sous-Bois and Bondy, all in the Seine-Saint-Denis region, which is considered to be a "sensitive area of immigration and modest incomes."
- In Sevran, youths set fire to two rooms of a primary school, along with several cars. Three officers were slightly injured.
- In Aulnay-sous-Bois, rioters threw Molotov cocktails at the town hall and rocks at the firehouse; police fired rubber bullets at advancing rioters.
- Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy refers to rioters as "scum"
- French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin "met Tuesday with the parents of the three families, promising a full investigation of the deaths and insisting on 'the need to restore calm,' the prime minister's office said."
- Wednesday, November 2 - 7th night of rioting
- Reports suggest rioters briefly stormed a police station while 78 vehicles were torched.
- One government official claims that live rounds were fired at riot police.
- Two primary schools, a post office, and a shopping centre were damaged and a large car showroom set ablaze.
- Police vans and cars were stoned as gangs turned on police.
- Rioting had spread west-ward to the area of Hauts-de-Seine where a police station was bombarded with home-made Molotov cocktails.
- Jacques Chirac, the President of France, made appeals for calm, and Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin held an emergency cabinet meeting. De Villepin issued a statement saying "Let's avoid stigmatising areas", an apparent rebuke to his political rival, Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, who has called the rioters "scum" (racaille). .
- A woman on crutches in her fifties, Joëlle M., was doused with petrol in Sevran-Beaudotes and set on fire as she exited a bus; "She was rescued by the driver (Mohammed Tadjer) and hospitalized with severe burns"
Read more about this topic: Timeline Of The 2005 French Civil Unrest
Famous quotes containing the word week:
“Jesus would recommend you to pass the first day of the week rather otherwise than you pass it now, and to seek some other mode of bettering the morals of the community than by constraining each other to look grave on a Sunday, and to consider yourselves more virtuous in proportion to the idleness in which you pass one day in seven.”
—Frances Wright (1795–1852)
“For most visitors to Manhattan, both foreign and domestic, New York is the Shrine of the Good Time. “I don’t see how you stand it,” they often say to the native New Yorker who has been sitting up past his bedtime for a week in an attempt to tire his guest out. “It’s all right for a week or so, but give me the little old home town when it comes to living.” And, under his breath, the New Yorker endorses the transfer and wonders himself how he stands it.”
—Robert Benchley (1889–1945)