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Firefighters try to extinguish a car in Venissieux near Lyon, Sunday.

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Riots expose the larger problem of inequality in France (3:12)

School budget constraints relate to current unrest (2:27)

Rioting brings integration policies into question (2:10)

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PARIS, France (AP) -- France's worst rioting since the 1960s seems to be nearing an end, the national police chief said Sunday, with fewer cars torched nationwide and Paris calm despite an alert that sent thousands of riot police into the capital's streets.

In scattered attacks, youths rammed a burning car into a center for retirees in Provence and pelted police with stones in the historic heart of Lyon. A firebomb was tossed at a Lyon mosque but did not explode.

The regional government responded by banning potentially disruptive public gatherings in parts of central Lyon on Sunday afternoon.

The nationwide storm of arson attacks, rioting and other violence has lost steam since Wednesday, when France declared a state of emergency. Youths set fire to 374 parked vehicles Saturday-Sunday, police said, compared with 502 the previous night.

If the downward trend continues, "things could return to normal very quickly," National Police Chief Michel Gaudin said. On an average Saturday night in France, he said, youths burn about 100 cars.

The unrest continued for an 18th night Sunday. In Toulouse, rioters rammed a car into a primary school before setting the building ablaze, the regional government said.

Officials already are turning their attention to helping riot-hit towns recover: European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso proposed Sunday that the European Union give euro50 million ($58 million) to France, and said it could make up to euro1 billion ($1.17 billion) available in longer-term support for suburban jobs and social cohesion.

The unrest -- sparked by the accidental electrocution deaths of two teens who thought police were chasing them -- began in Paris' poor, disenfranchised suburbs, where many immigrants from North and West Africa live with their French-born children in high-rise housing projects.

The mayhem, France's worst since the 1968 student-worker protests, has forced the country to confront anger that has built up for decades about racial discrimination, crowded housing and unemployment. The national jobless rate is nearly 10 percent; for young people in housing projects it climbs to 40 percent.

Venissieux, a suburb of the southeastern city of Lyon, was one of about 40 towns to impose a curfew for minors under the state-of-emergency measures. "What's the point? There's not a war here!" young people cried out to patrolling police in one troubled neighborhood.

"We always think we're going to see our car burned, or our neighbor's car burned, when we wake up in the morning," said 40-year-old Sihem, who declined to give her last name.

The Cabinet planned to propose a bill Monday allowing an extension of the 12-day state of emergency if needed.

Also, France was expected in the next few days to start deporting foreigners implicated in the violence -- a plan by law-and-order Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy that has caused divisions in the government.

Azouz Begag, the equal opportunities minister who comes from an immigrant shantytown near Lyon, told Le Parisien newspaper he would raise the issue with Sarkozy privately. Begag recently criticized the interior minister for referring to young troublemakers as "scum."

A poll in Le Journal du Dimanche newspaper suggested Sarkozy was the politician French people trusted most to solve the suburbs' troubles. Some 53 percent said they supported him -- while about 71 percent said they lacked confidence in President Jacques Chirac.

Nearly a quarter said they trusted far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen, Chirac's main challenger in the 2002 presidential race. Le Pen has seized on the violence to promote his National Front party's "zero immigration" platform.

More copycat attacks were registered in neighboring countries Sunday. Belgium registered its worst night in a week of attacks, with 29 cars, trucks and buses torched, the government said. (Full story)

In the Dutch city of Rotterdam, youths set four cars on fire overnight, police said. Two cars were burned in the Swiss town of Martigny.

While Paris has been mostly calm since unrest broke out October 27, calls for "violent action" Saturday night in the capital were posted on Internet blogs and sent in text messages to cell phones.

Thousands of police guarded the Eiffel Tower, the Champs-Elysees avenue and train stations. But only one incident was reported -- a fire at a gas station -- the national police chief said.

In the southeastern city of Lyon, police fired tear gas to disperse stone-throwing youths in a historic square, Place Bellecour. It was the first time in the unrest that youths and police clashed in the heart of a major French city.

Hours earlier, regional authorities imposed a weekend curfew on Lyon, France's third-largest city, barring youths under 18 from being outside without adult supervision late at night.

Also banned were "all gatherings liable to provoke or sustain disorder" in three districts of central Lyon. That ban lasted Sunday afternoon until the early evening.

An overnight firebomb attack on Lyon's Grand Mosque left traces of gasoline on the wall, but the device did not explode, officials said.

In separate incidents Saturday night, youths in Carpentras rammed a burning car into a center for retirees and broke into a school to set a classroom on fire, the regional government said. A police officer in the Paris suburb of La Courneuve was injured by a metal ball dropped from an apartment building.

French police: Riots losing steam

Internet, text message threats prompt lockdown

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