Sarkozy Accused of Election Stunt After 1,000 Officers Raid Estates

More than 1,000 French riot police and special forces raided housing estates in a troubled Paris suburb at dawn yesterday, kicking open doors and arresting 33 people in a search for the suspected ringleaders of violent riots last year.

President Nicolas Sarkozy's political opponents called the operation an excessive "security spectacle" after pictures of armored police trucks and "RoboCop" riot police were broadcast by television reporters tipped off in advance. Leftwingers accused Sarkozy, who is suffering in the polls, of trying to bolster his UMP party ahead of local elections next month.

The operation focused on 10 apartment blocks in Villiers-le-Bel and the surrounding area north of Paris, which saw three nights of serious rioting last November after two teenagers died in a motorbike crash with a police car. Although the unrest was contained within a few days, it was more serious than weeks of rioting in 2005 because the Villiers-le-Bel rioters fired guns at the police. During the unrest, 130 officers were injured, including at least 10 hit by buckshot or pellets.

Sarkozy vowed to track down the riot ringleaders "one by one". In December police leafleted the estates offering cash rewards for information. This month, launching an aid package for France's troubled high-rise blocks, where youth unemployment can reach 40%, Sarkozy vowed a "war without mercy" on crime.

The labor minister, Xavier Bertrand, said the arrests of people aged 17 to 31 showed "there is no zone of lawlessness in our republic". But the socialist Ségolène Royal said launching the raids with cameras in tow during an election period served "to influence opinion, to scare".

Sarkozy has sunk to his lowest ever poll ratings. This weekend politicians, including the former conservative prime minister Dominique de Villepin and Royal, signed an appeal against the emergence of an "elective monarchy" in France. They did not name Sarkozy, but delivered a thinly veiled attack against a monarchic form of "purely personal power".