November 28, 2007 (LPAC) - Following the death of two in a still to be elucidated incident with the police in the poor Paris suburb of Villiers-le-Bel, rioting turned into asymmetric war in the larger Paris area, between more than 200 inhabitants of the city and the police. On Monday alone, 82 policemen were wounded, which compared to the 224 policemen wounded in the 2005 riots which lasted three weeks. Worse even is that in 85% of the cases, the policemen were wounded by shot guns, using 6 mm lead pellets, used for the first time in such a conflict. The well trained rioters aimed their shots at those areas of the body not covered by the protection shields, hitting one in the eye, others on the face, the shoulder, the hip, etc. The rioters are fully organized, reports Le Figaro, noting they were stationed on the rooftops to transmit early warning signals on the police deployments via their cell phones to groups of approximately 10 rioters on the ground fighting with the police.

Over the years, unemployment, lack of decent integration policies, and racism have created the conditions of a total break of some of those areas with the rest of the French society. But these symptoms should, in a healthy world, drive people to turn to solutions, not asymmetric warfare. In this context, drug mafias and other groups have taken hold in some of those areas making those areas vulnerable to different types of manipulation. Many weapons - including things like stingers, bazookas and Stalin orgues (Katyusha rockets) - were circulated in those suburbs, whereas before, rioters had only used stone or Molotov cocktails against the police.