Bands of youths torched more than 750 cars and burned warehouses and a nursery school in a ninth night of violence that spread from the restive Paris suburbs to towns around France, police said Saturday. Authorities appealed for calm in the face of an unprecedented streak of urban unrest in France. Troublemakers fired bullets into a vandalized bus, set a warehouse ablaze and burned 44 cars in a lot in Suresnes, just west of Paris. In a particularly malevolent turn, rioters stoned rescuers aiding someone who had fallen ill and torched the ambulance, police said. Incidents, mainly fires, were reported in the northern city of Lille, in Toulouse, in the southwest, Rouen, in the west and elsewhere on the second night of unrest in areas beyond metropolitan Paris. An Interior Ministry operations center tracking the destruction reported more than 750 vehicles burned around France. The figure _ not definitive _ marked a sharp rise from the more than 500 vehicles set ablaze 24 hours earlier. Arrests were up, to 203, the center was quoted as saying by The Associated Press.
