AULNAY-SOUS-BOIS, France (AP) – France’s prime minister vowed yesterday to restore order to Paris’ riot-hit suburbs as violence took a dangerous new turn, with rioters shooting at police and firefighters, and attacking trains and symbols of the French state.

Police were deployed for a feared eight night of clashes late yesterday, after bands of youths lobbing stones and petrol bombs ignored President Jacques Chirac’s appeal for calm a day earlier. Facing mounting pressure and criticism, Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin told parliament that restoring order was his “absolute priority”.

The unrest cast a cloud over the end of Ramadan, the Muslim holy month. In Clichy-sous-Bois, where the violence first erupted, men filled the Bilal mosque for night prayer, but streets were subdued and shops shut early.

“Look around you. How do you think we can celebrate?” said Abdallah Hammo as he closed the tea house where he works.

From an outburst of anger over the accidental deaths of two teenagers, the rioting has grown into a broader challenge against the French state and its forces of order. The violence has laid bare discontent simmering in suburbs where African and Muslim immigrants and their French-born children are trapped by poverty, unemployment, racial discrimination, crime and poor education and housing.

Despite the release yesterday of a preliminary investigation that appeared to exonerate police of any direct role in the teenagers’ deaths, no immediate end to unrest appeared in sight. Some 1,300 officers were being deployed in Seine-Saint-Denis, a tough northeastern suburb of Paris that has seen the worst violence and which includes the town of Clichy-sous-Bois.

The teenagers – Traore Bouna, 15, and Zyed Benna, 17 – were killed October 27 while hiding from police in a power substation. Youths in their neighbourhood suspect that police chased them to their deaths.

But the report, released by the Interior Ministry, said that while police went to Clichy-sous-Bois to investigate a suspected intrusion on a building site, they did not chase the teenagers who were killed. A third teenager who was seriously injured also told investigators they were aware of the dangers when they hid in the substation, which was fenced off, the report said.

It did not specifically address why the teens decided to run when police came to the neighbourhood. But it said Benna was known to police for having committed robbery with violence and that Bouna was among those who had intruded onto the building site.

Such official assurances that police were not directly responsible for the deaths have not stemmed the unrest, which authorities said spread Wednesday night to at least 20 Paris-region towns. Government offices, a police station, a primary school and a college, a Clichy-sous-Bois fire station and a train station were among the buildings targeted.