Sarkozy calls security meeting after fresh unrest

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has summoned senior ministers to a security meeting tomorrow after around 80 police were injured in a second night of violence in Paris suburbs.

Rioters pelted police with stones, petrol bombs and firecrackers during several hours of skirmishes in Villiers and nearby areas overnight. Police replied with tear gas and rubber bullets, and made five arrests.

Prime Minister Francois Fillon and Interior Minister Michele Alliot-Marie will be among those at the meeting following Sarkozy's return from a trip to China, his spokesman David Martinon said in a statement.

Sarkozy will first visit a senior police officer who was seriously hurt in Villiers-le-Bel, a suburb north of Paris. The deaths of two youths in a crash with a police car there on Sunday sparked the latest unrest.

The violence revived memories of the prolonged riots of two years ago when thousands of cars were torched after two teenagers were electrocuted in a power sub-station while apparently fleeing police.

The 2005 disturbances were the worst civil unrest in France for 40 years and many blamed the harsh rhetoric of Sarkozy, who was interior minister at the time, for stoking the violence.

This time, Sarkozy has called for calm and the low-key government response suggests it wants to avoid exacerbating tensions in France's deprived, ethnically diverse suburbs.

The latest disturbances distracted from Sarkozy's success in clinching billions of euros of contracts for French firms on his China trip, and provided a new headache following recent transport strikes and student protests over his reforms.