Tougher law sought after bus attacks

PARIS – France’s prime minister Monday called for broader penalties against youths involved in violence like the firebombing of a bus that severely injured a woman passenger over the weekend.

Dominique de Villepin called for witnesses to step forward following the attack Saturday in southern Marseille, the first of two weekend attacks by youths against public transportation in France.

The two attacks followed a pattern of targeting city buses in a return to urban violence a year after riots gripped France’s troubled neighborhoods, where many immigrants from former colonies in Muslim North Africa and their French-born children live.

Villepin, who held an emergency meeting on security and public transport Monday, said witnesses of the bus attack would be guaranteed anonymity if they come forward.

“We have all been profoundly shocked” by this “barbaric crime,” Villepin said. He announced plans to broaden a new anti-crime law with an amendment to punish “all those who are involved in and encourage” – not just those who are directly responsible for the violence.

In the Marseille attack on Saturday, youths tossed a bottle of flammable liquid into the bus, seriously burning a 26-year-old French woman of Senegalese origin.

On Sunday, youths in southeastern Grenoble threw stones from an overhead bridge onto a tramway, breaking the windshield, police said. The driver was hospitalized to remove glass splinters from his eyes.