French "Youths" Get More Brazen

"Youths" attacked two French police officer in Seine Saint-Denis:

PARIS (Reuters) - A policeman was in hospital with serious head injuries on Wednesday after youths attacked him and a colleague in an assault that renewed fears about violence and crime in France's tinderbox suburbs.

The police captain suffered a double fracture of the skull and almost lost an eye after he and his driver were lured into a trap and assaulted in the Corbeil-Essonnes suburb south of the capital, said a police union official.

This is classic French right here:

Recent crime figures reported a sharp rise in violence, including attacks on police. The head of France's crime statistics body said that was in part due to Sarkozy's decision to order police back into tough neighbourhoods since the right won power in 2002.

So if I'm reading this correctly (as I'm a knuckle-dragging right-winger with no sense of nuance), the head of France's crime statistics body (a civil service job for everyone!) is blaming the right-wingers for sending police officers into tough neighborhoods to protect citizens. What an evil right-wing idea!

Anyway, It appears as though the captain will be okay after a few more surgeries. But who are these "youths?" Al-Reuters doesn't say but they may have put it into code in the last sentence of the story on page 3:

The situation was also playing into the hands of local Islamic extremists, Cordet's note said.