(Agencies)
Updated: 2007-11-28 09:24

VILLIERS LE BEL, France - The French authorities deployed 1,000 police to a northern Paris suburb Tuesday to prevent a third night of youth riots amid signs that the violence could be spreading.

French Prime Minister Francois Fillon visited the restive suburb of Villiers le Bel, where the death of two teenagers Sunday touched off two nights of violence that have left at least 120 police injured.

Riot police walk in a field on the outskirts of the Villiers-le-Bel suburb outside Paris. Youths battled police for a second night in Paris suburbs, burning down government buildings and injuring 64 police officers, who stepped up security in troubled towns on Tuesday. [Agencies]

Nine people were detained in Villiers ahead of Fillon's visit, police told AFP.

Earlier, a court jailed eight youths over the clashes with police Sunday and Monday. Four were handed prison sentences ranging from three to 10 months, while four others were detained pending judgement.

There was also Tuesday signs that the violence had spread outside the Paris region when about a dozen cars were set on fire in the southern city of Toulouse.

For two nights running, young men have hurled petrol bombs and bricks at police, torching cars and buildings in Villiers le Bel, where two youths were killed in a motorbike collision with a police car.

Faced with the worst eruption of urban violence since the riots of 2005, Fillon vowed a beefed-up security presence Tuesday evening and to "do everything" to stop the violence from spreading across the Paris area.

"Those who shoot at policemen, those who beat a police officer almost to death are criminals and must be treated as such," he told parliament earlier. "We will do everything tonight to ensure maximum security."

Returning from a state visit to China, President Nicolas Sarkozy was to chair a special meeting on the unrest Wednesday morning, after receiving the families of the victims at the Elysee palace.

The clashes left five buildings damaged by fire in Villiers le Bel, including a tax office, a supermarket, a library and a nursery school, as well as 63 cars. Two dozen people have been detained to date.

A report from Le Monde newspaper described boys as young as 13 taking orders from their elders to torch buildings and forming battle ranks against the police, vowing to "do in" a "pig" -- a police officer.

Police unions said the violence was worse than the rioting that hit hundreds of French cities in October and November 2005 -- also sparked by the deaths of two youths.

Some 120 police officers have been injured, four of them seriously after being hit by buckshot from hunting weapons, according to police figures. By comparision, 200 officers were injured in three weeks of rioting in 2005.

"Two things are cause for anxiety: signs the violence is spreading to neighbouring areas, which have already had their share of burned cars, and the almost systematic use of firearms against police," said Douhane Mohamed of the Synergie police union.

Smaller outbreaks of violence also flared in five other high-immigration neighbourhoods of the north Paris suburbs, not far from the starting-point of the 2005 riots.

An initial investigation appeared to confirm the police version of Sunday's incident, according to which the two teenagers -- aged 15 and 16, neither wearing a crash helmet -- were riding a motorbike that careered into their car.

But relatives of the two youths and some other local people appeared convinced the police had caused the accident and fled the scene without treating the victims.

Some 200 people staged a silent march late on Tuesday in Villiers le Bel in the youths' memory.

Police and politicians say the French suburbs remain a "tinderbox" two years after the last riots, which exposed France's failure to integrate its large black and Arab population, the children and grandchildren of immigrants from its African colonies.

"This is no place for human beings to live," said local resident Boniface Gabo, pointing up at his grimy tower block. "Make no mistake, every hundred kids who grow up here are a hundred lost kids."

Opposition Socialist politicians appealed for calm, while accusing the right-wing government of "abandoning" the suburbs.

But Nadine Morano, spokeswoman for Sarkozy's Union for a Popular Movement (UMP), warned "there is no magic wand".

"It is going to take us a generation to transform things in these difficult neighbourhoods -- housing, jobs, security."