Nov. 4 (Bloomberg) -- Gangs burned cars and took on police for the eighth consecutive night in the Paris suburbs and riots spread to the French provinces as the government of Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin struggled to restore calm.

About 240 cars were torched in the northeastern and western suburbs of Paris; 27 buses were set on fire in a depot southwest of the city, local officials said. The number of cars destroyed last night in the whole Paris region totaled more than 500, Agence France-Presse reported. Vehicles in the Burgundy city of Dijon and in the south were also set on fire, it said.

``We're stricken by the fact that there is a great coordination'' among rioters in the Seine-Saint-Denis department northeast of Paris, Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy said on LCI television today. ``All this isn't spontaneous.''

A disabled woman suffered burns when the bus she was on was set alight in Sevran in Seine-Saint-Denis, department Prefect Jean-Francois Cordet said in an e-mailed statement.

The violence reflects tensions in French ghettos marked by youth unemployment of more than 30 percent, poverty and large immigrant Muslim communities in the majority Catholic nation. De Villepin yesterday vowed before the Senate that authorities ``will not give in'' to the violence and will make restoring order the government's top priority. ``I will not allow organized gangs to lay down the law in the suburbs,'' he said.

Electrocution

The first riots erupted after two boys, aged 15 and 19, one of Tunisian origin, the other from sub-Saharan Africa, were electrocuted on Oct. 27 by high-voltage equipment in an electricity substation, where they took refuge because they were being pursued by police, their families said. The police denied there was any pursuit. The public prosecutor's office said it has opened an investigation into the case.

The disabled woman who was hurt in the town of Sevran couldn't get out of the bus in which she had been traveling, AFP reported, citing the local prosecutor's office. One youth doused her with gasoline before others threw a flaming rag on the bus, AFP said. The driver rescued the 56-year-old woman and she was taken to a hospital with second- and third-degree burns, it said.

Twenty-seven people were taken into custody in Seine-Saint- Denis and 10 in the Yvelines department, according to an e-mailed statement from the prefect.

Fewer Incidents

``Contrary to preceding nights, direct clashes with the police remained few and there was no shooting with real bullets,'' Cordet, prefect for the Seine-Saint-Denis department, said today. Fewer big gangs and more smaller groups were involved, he said.

In Aulnay-sous-Bois, things were calmer last night, a city hall spokesman said. He said a carpet warehouse was burned in an industrial zone. Town authorities are organizing a march tomorrow to protest the violence, he said.

Police fielded an extra 1,300 officers last night in Seine- Saint-Denis. In the town of Neuilly-sur-Marne, police vans were peppered by shotgun pellets, the prefect said. A classroom at a school in the neighboring town of Stains was set on fire. Police in the town faced off with gangs near a synagogue, he said.

In the Bouches-du-Rhone department around the Mediterranean port of Marseille, cars were torched in the town of Salon de Provence, the city hall said, without giving numbers or other details.

`Copycat Actions'

``There are now copycat actions and imitations,'' said Eric Raoult, the mayor of Raincy, a town east of Paris. Seine-Saint- Denis, where the riots started, ``is a poor region. People need to find jobs, but it's difficult when your name is Soraya or Kamel,'' Raoult, a member of President Jacques Chirac's Union for a Popular Movement party, said in an interview.

Calls for calm by Chirac have largely been ignored. Chirac gave de Villepin a month to report on measures to integrate ethnic minorities and promote equal opportunity. He also called for a plan to crack down on youth gangs.

Joblessness in France is 22.2 percent for men under 25 years old, compared with 7.8 percent for men aged 25 to 49, according to the Labor Ministry. France doesn't include ethnicity in its census nor does it publish poverty or unemployment statistics based on ethnicity or religion.

Among 20- to 24-year-olds living in French suburbs whose residents are predominantly Muslim, the jobless rate during the 1999 census was 37.2 percent for men, compared with the national average of 22.5 percent, and 39.5 percent for women, compared with 28.4 percent. The figures come from a 2003 report for the prime minister by the High Council for Integration.

Beginning just after World War II, France allowed in hundreds of thousands of manual laborers from Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia. They settled mostly in housing projects, which were specially constructed for them, outside Paris, Lyon, Marseille and other large cities. France's population of immigrants more than doubled from 1946 to 1999.

To contact the reporter on this story: Sandrine Rastello in Paris at srastello@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: November 4, 2005 11:20 EST