Telegraph | News | Muslims are waging civil war against us, claims police union

Telegraph | News | Muslims are waging civil war against us, claims police union: "Radical Muslims in France's housing estates are waging an undeclared 'intifada' against the police, with violent clashes injuring an average of 14 officers each day.

Nicolas Sarkozy
Interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy was warned of an 'intifada'

As the interior ministry said that nearly 2,500 officers had been wounded this year, a police union declared that its members were 'in a state of civil war' with Muslims in the most depressed 'banlieue' estates which are heavily populated by unemployed youths of north African origin.

It said the situation was so grave that it had asked the government to provide police with armoured cars to protect officers in the estates, which are becoming no-go zones.

The number of attacks has risen by a third in two years. Police representatives told the newspaper Le Figaro that the 'taboo' of attacking officers on patrol has been broken.

Instead, officers – especially those patrolling in pairs or small groups – faced attacks as soon as they tried to arrest locals.

Senior officers insisted that the problem was essentially criminal in nature, with crime bosses on the estates fighting back against tough tactics.

The interior minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, who is also the leading centre-Right candidate for the presidency, has sent heavily equipped units into areas with orders to regain control from drug smuggling gangs and other organised crime rings. Such aggressive raids were 'disrupting the underground economy in the estates', one senior official told Le Figaro.

However, not all officers on the ground accept that essentially secular interpretation. Michel Thoomis, the secretary general of the hardline Action Police trade union, has written to Mr Sarkozy warning of an 'intifada' on the estates and demanding that officers be given armoured cars in the most dangerous areas.

He said yesterday: 'We are in a state"