For 2d night, violence flares in a Paris suburb

VILLIERS-LE-BEL, France - Youths threw Molotov cocktails and torched cars in a troubled neighborhood outside Paris in a second night of street violence yesterday after two teenagers on a motorbike died in a crash with a police car.

Anger focused on police, with residents saying officers left the scene of Sunday's crash without helping the boys - an assertion officials cast doubt on. Police were investigating.

Investigators were still trying to piece together what happened in the crash Sunday afternoon in Villiers-le-Bel, a town of public-housing blocks that is home to a mix of Arab, black and white residents in the French capital's northern suburbs.

Police officials said that the teens ignored traffic rules and crashed into the police vehicle and that the motorbike they were riding was unregistered. Neither boy - ages 15 and 16 - was wearing a helmet as required by law.

The internal police oversight agency opened an inquiry to probe whether the officers failed to help the teenagers and whether manslaughter charges should be filed, a police official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media.

With more than 20 police officers injured and two police stations attacked Sunday, the violence was a reminder of the tensions that drove weeks of unrest in 2005 in poor neighborhoods with large minority populations.

Villiers-le-Bel was on edge yesterday for a second night. "The situation is tense," said Gaelle James of the Synergie police union. "There are a lot of police on the ground to prevent more flare-ups."

Among those injured Sunday was the town's police chief, who was beaten in the face after he tried to negotiate with the rioters, police said.

French President

Nicolas Sarkozy, remaining silent on sensitive human-rights topics on a visit to Beijing, won deals from China yesterday for two nuclear reactors and 160 Airbus jetliners together worth $30 billion. "The total amount of these contracts has never been matched before," Sarkozy told Chinese President Hu Jintao.

The huge sales appeared to be a reward to France for respecting Beijing's sensitivities on such matters as autonomy for Tibet. Sarkozy, unlike his German and U.S. counterparts, hasn't received the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan spiritual leader, whom China condemns.

The Chinese long have used

airplane orders as a political tool, giving orders to Airbus when their relations with the United States soured or buying Boeing planes

when their relationship with Europe was rocky.

- McClatchy Newspapers