Sunday, 3 February 2013
Around twenty "jeunes" forced a TGV (High-speed train) to stop on Saturday when it was leaving Marseilles heading towards Nice, and tried to board it before taking flight when the police arrived.Source: Nice Matin
Five "jeunes" from a housing estate in the city's 11th arrondissement were arrested and detained by the local police. Passengers in the train who warned police after seeing the attackers through the window reported that they had weapons but the police did not recover any, according to a source close to the inquiry.
Having left Paris, the TGV had just departed the station Saint-Charles in Marseilles, shortly after 2 pm, when its driver was forced to stop by torches placed on the track in the La Pomme district, in the direction of Aubagne.
"These red burning torches are a safety tool that is used ordinarily to signal a major problem and this case the drivers have orders to stop," explained a spokesman from the regional office of the SNCF [transport company] in Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur.
The police were notified immediately and the attackers took flight on foot when they arrived. Five of them were arrested. The train, whose doors were locked, suffered slight damage and left shortly before 4 pm, according to these same sources.
Their intention was to rob the passengers in the train, but they couldn't get the doors open.
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UK
Conservative councillor suspended for alleged racism against Muslims
Chris Joannides, a councillor in Enfield, is said to have compared women wearing burqas to rubbish bags
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2013/feb/01/conservative-councillor-chris-joannides-facebook
This may be a pattern of things to come and it seems to be a well-planned one. I say that because obviously someone knew enough to see that the signalling torches were active, thus ensuring the train would halt (if this were just thieves, they'd have waited at a station or boarded the train at one). Whoever planned it had also enough cunning to arrange a small band of criminals: a large group would have been impossible for the authorities to ignore (passengers taking photos on their phones, remember how the French authorities forbade that during the car burnings some years ago). This way, it just appears an 'opportunistic' gang of youths chancing it...This is the kind of small 'raiding party' designed to discomfit the authorities so that they can't take too firm steps (so as not to alert the larger public) and yet effective enough so word seeps out to unsteady the public. Next time, those torches may be more deadly. This attack may have been one to judge the rapid response, and what type of response, of the authorities. That some were arrested is no big deal to those who planned it, just expendable tools.
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