Eight Killed In Paris Riots

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29744, 10 February 1962, Page 11

Eight Killed In Paris Riots

{HZ. Press Assn.—Copyright) PARIS, February 9. Eight persons were killed in last night’s violent street fighting between Communist-led mobs and the police, Paris police headquarters reported early today. The Associated Press reported that several hundred demonstrators and policemen were injured in the fighting, which took place on the historic Place de la Bastille, where thousands turned out to protest against plastic bombing by the Right-wing Secret Army Organisation.

Reuter said the threat of new trouble loomed over Paris today after last night's violent clashes. Three of those killed last night were women and one of the others was a 15-year-old boy. About 140 police were injured, 10 seriously. Early today, the organisers of the demonstration called for a general strike in Paris during the funerals of the eight killed. Police Charge

The anti-A.O.S. demonstration yesterday had been banned by the authorities and when it took place, police, wielding truncheons, charged the demonstrators. Anticipating a storm of criticism for the vigorous police action, the Ministry of the Interior issued a statement saying the riots were organised by the Communist Party.

The Interior Minister (Mr Roger Frey) told an early

morning press conference the damonstrations were "manipulated and led by the Communist Party and its aides*' and fell into "a trap laid by the O.A.S. and the Communists, whose interests were closely allied in this case." The violence of the street fighting, in which 8000 to 10,000 demonstrators replied to police baton charges with brickbats, bits of smashedup iron grating, and clubs made from broken cafe chairs and tables, shocked the Paris public. The banned demonstration was called by the Communists to protest against plastic bombings by the 0.A.5., the Associated Press said.

Even while the fighting raged between mobs and police, 12 plastic bombs roared out at offices and publishing houses of the Communist Party. One shattered the offices of Tass, the Soviet news agency. A woman

office worker was reported injured. Police could not estimate the total who surged into the streets shortly after 5.30 p.m. and fought with cobblestones and fists. They said there were “several thousand" around the Place de la Bastille, but before a semblance of order was restored, other mobs farmed throughout the eastern end of the city.

At the height of the fighting, the Government issued an appeal for Parisians to heed the necessity for discipline and warned that the wild raging of mobs could only help “the enemies of France" and lead to anarchy. Today the Communist-led and Catholic trade union federations, student unions and the Communist Party claimed that "demonstrators fell victim of a Government which does not prevent plastic bomb attacks, but which employs its police to club and kill anti-fascists." Police early today seized the Communist Party newspaper “L’Humanite," the near-Communist “Liberation” and several provincial Communist newspapers because of their reports on the riots and publication of a Communist call for strikes and new demonstrations “of every form.” The French Socialist Party newspaper, “Le Populaire.” described as “inadmiasable" the Government ban on the demonstrations “and the scandalous repression which followed.”

“The W’orld at large will know that a Government which was denouncing the

O.A.S. last Monday has murdered people who wanted to fight the extremist organisation.” the newspaper said. “The Government could not fall more stupidly and more criminally into the top laid by the OA.S.” Meanwhile, in Algeria, 11 persons, seven of them Moslems. were killed in extremist and insurgent attacks yesterday. French military sources in Algiers Mid early today. Forty-seven others were wounded, 42 of them Moslems.