French President Nicolas Sarkozy vowed Wednesday to track down rioters who shot at police and bring them to justice after violence raged for a third straight night in the suburbs north of Paris.

Plainclothes police officers patrol as a helicopter flies overhead in Villiers-le-Bel, a northern Paris suburb, Tuesday evening.
(Michel Euler/Associated Press)

"So that things are very clear: What has happened is absolutely unacceptable," Sarkozy said after meeting with a wounded police captain hospitalized in Eaubonne, north of Paris. "We will find the shooters."

However, French Prime Minister Francois Fillon said things were calmer than the previous two nights.

"But we feel that things are still fragile, and we need a large preventative force on the ground so that what happened last night does not happen again," he said.

More cars were set on fire in and around the Paris suburb of Villiers-le-Bel, a town of public housing blocks home to a mix of Arab, black and white residents in Paris' northern suburbs.

The renewed outburst of violence in the Paris suburbs was shaping up to be a stern test for Sarkozy, who as interior minister sparked controversy and accusations of racism in 2005 when he referred to rioters in the neighbourhoods as "scum."

At least 22 youths had been taken into custody in the latest violence. Eight people were convicted Tuesday in fast-track trials and sentenced to three to 10 months in prison, the regional government said.

The riots were triggered by the deaths of a 15-year-old and a 16-year-old killed in a crash with a police patrol car on Sunday in Villiers-le-Bel.

Sarkozy was meeting Wednesday morning with the families of the two teens and with the mayor of Villiers-le-Bel before having a security meeting with his top ministers.

Despite the assurances of Fillion and public safety director for the region, Deni Joubert, who said the situation is "under control," Patrice Ribeiro of the Synergie police union said rioters included "genuine urban guerrillas."

82 officers injured: police

He said rioters were using hunting shotguns.

Police said 82 officers were injured Monday night, 10 of them by buckshot and pellets. Four were seriously wounded, the force said.

One rioter with a shotgun "was firing off two shots, reloading in a stairwell, coming back out — boom, boom — and firing again," said Gilles Wiart, No. 2 official in the SGP-FO police union.

The scene of destruction was all too reminiscent of two years ago in the impoverished area, when some of the worst violence in France's history occurred in the wake of the deaths of two teenagers in an electrical substation following a police chase.

In the violence that consumed the neighbourhoods for weeks, rioters targeted schools, hospitals, buses and cars, leaving a wake of immense material destruction that prompted authorities to declare a state of emergency and impose curfews.

With files from the Associated Press