AULNAY-SOUS-BOIS, France — Community leaders and residents marched past smoky ruins and charred vehicles in tense industrial suburbs of Paris on Saturday to protest a 10-day wave of violence, and authorities said the riots spreading across France seemed increasingly well-organized.
New fires and disturbances broke out after dusk fell Saturday. By 10 p.m., two schools and more than 100 vehicles had been burned. Several of the blazes were ignited by a Molotov cocktail near the Gare du Nord train station in Paris, within the limits of the capital.
Arsonists torched about 900 cars around the nation late Friday and early Saturday, the largest number since the disturbances began. They also set ablaze a city hall, schools, a car dealership, a textile warehouse, a day-care center and other buildings in immigrant neighborhoods on the edge of the capital.
Police made more than 253 arrests overnight Friday, more than any day so far.
The riots began Oct. 27 after the accidental deaths of two teenagers hiding from police. But that incident now seems little more than a trigger for an explosion of anger and alienation that has accumulated for years in France's poor, predominantly Muslim neighborhoods.
Earlier Saturday, in this working-class town near Charles de Gaulle International Airport that has been the site of some of the worst rioting, an ethnically mixed group of about 1,000 residents marched beneath a rainy, steel-gray sky. They sang the national anthem and condemned the destruction of their cars, public buses, workplaces and services.
"We will not give in to the violence," said Mayor Gerard Gaudron, who wore an official sash in the French national colors. "Enough violence. People need to get back to their normal lives."
A short drive away, smoke shrouded acrid-smelling streets around the smoldering ruins of a carpet factory that was set afire days ago. Skeletons of burnt cars and buses filled the grounds of a devastated Renault dealership, a Hertz rental facility and the parking lots of gray and beige public-housing towers that have been the epicenters of the violence.
Knots of youths hung out on the grounds of the complexes, hunched beneath sweatshirt hoods and caps, talking on cellphones and eyeing the marchers.
"The kids know us," said Aissa Diawara, leader of a women's association in the area who participated in the march. "We are going to work to help them overcome what they want to overcome, so they can express themselves without ruining our lives."
