Riot police battling to restore order in run-down immigrant suburbs around Paris came under gunfire last night during a seventh night of anti-government rioting.

Jean-Francois Cordet, the top official in the Seine-Saint-Denis region north of Paris, said today that four shots were fired at police and fire officers in four different towns, but without causing any injuries.

Despite the presence of a large force of armed riot police, nine people were lightly injured and more than 200 vehicles torched as youths continued their week-long rampage.

In one northeastern suburb, Aulnay-sous-Bois, a police station was briefly taken over and ransacked by youths while a gymnasium and a Renault garage were set ablaze and a shopping centre vandalised. South of Paris, in Antony, two firebombs were thrown at a police station.

The rioting has become a major headache for the French Government, highlighting the divisions and rivalries between its major figures. Both Dominique de Villepin, the Prime Minister, and Nicolas Sarkozy, the Interior Minister, have cancelled foreign trips to deal with the violence.

President Chirac yesterday appealed for calm, but he appeared to take a potshot at M Sarkozy, his political rival and future presidential candidate, when he said that an "escalation of disrespect" could make the situation worse.

Although the riots were set off by the accidental electrocution of two African teenagers who climbed into an electrical sub-station to escape a police identity check, the rioters say they are motivated by M Sarkozy's own "disrespect" - he has offended leftwingers and immigrant groups by promising to "hose down" immigrant estates and clean out the "scum".

All of the areas hit by the rioting have large ethnic minorities, mostly Muslims of North African origin, and are dominated by depressing public housing estates where crime is rife and gangs run rampant. In one suburb, a French television crew were forced by hooded youths to abandon their car, which was then set ablaze by a 40-strong mob.

M de Villepin held crisis talks on the unrest with a group of ministers and MPs from his centre-right UMP party this morning, with more talks scheduled later in the day. MPs said afterwards that the Government was united on how to tackle the unrest: by upholding the law but also by taking urgent steps to improve living conditions and social integration in these towns.

M de Villepin has said that he is counting on M Sarkozy - whose open ambition to run for president in 2007 had been boosted by a decline in crime and delinquency on his watch - to "take the necessary measures" on law-and-order.

In Clichy-sous-Bois, anger continued to run high over the death of the two youths, Bouna Traore, a 15-year-old of Malian background, and Zyed Benna, a 17-year-old of Tunisian origin, and over a police teargas grenade fired into a mosque during clashes on Sunday night.

The area was calmer last night than other neighbourhoods, but some youths said they planned to keep up their defiance. "We have found our thrills playing with riot police in the evening," one 22-year-old told the AFP news agency. "As long as the police come and provoke us in the evening, we’ll bring out the Molotov cocktails, stones, petanque balls, planks," he said.

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