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Three small bouquets were propped up yesterday against the wall where two teenagers died in a collision with a police car in a quiet street in a north Paris suburb. Shaking his head, Hussein, a construction worker from Mali, nodded at the flowers: “You can say that Sarko did this,” he said.

The charge struck a chord on the housing estates of Villiers-le-Bel, where hundreds of hooded youths, most no older than 17, fought police, burnt cars and buildings and looted for a second night on Monday. Nicolas Sarkozy, the former Interior Minister who brought tough policing to the presidency in May, is the channel for the anger that lingers in Villiers.

While France was witnessing a third night of rioting, with 20 cars and a library set ablaze in the southern city of Toulouse, many local people in Villiers were excusing the “kids” for the destruction of their neighbourhood, 18km (11 miles) from the capital. As well as 65 cars and a dozen shops and offices, the tally of damage for the first two nights included a library and nursery school around the corner from the leafy street where Moushin, 15, and Larami, 16, died.

Trouble spread last night to the western Paris suburb of Les Mureaux, where youths threw petrol bombs at police and eight people were detained for trying to set fire to a bus.

“It is much calmer than in previous nights but you can feel all this remains fragile,” François Fillon, the Prime Minister, said after meeting officials in Villiers last night.

The tension on the streets was palpable. “Sarko trains the cops like attack dogs and they come in here and treat the kids worse than animals,” Hussein, 25, said. An initial police investigation found that Moushin, of Moroccan origin, and Larami, whose family is from Mali, were at fault when their unlicensed mini-trail-bike slammed into the side of the three-man patrol car on Sunday afternoon. They were under-age and not wearing helmets.

Hatred for the mainly white police among the young of the minorityethnic estates meant that few believed the official version and their anger triggered violence, just as the accidental death of two teenagers in Clichy-sous-Bois, a few miles south, sparked weeks of rioting in Seine-Saint-Denis in 2005. But Villiers, a mix of suburban bungalows and parkland housing estates under the approach to Paris airport, is not as rough as the inner suburbs of the Seine-Saint-Denis, where the 2005 riots erupted.

Under blue skies yesterday, the burnt-out vehicles and smashed shop-fronts seemed odd among the leafy streets and trim housing blocks of Villiers. But all the ills of the immigrant-dominated banlieue are there: high unemployment, crime, poor education and a sense of exclusion from the prosperous, white-dominated country around them. “The death of these kids is a misfortune that just rubs in the misery here,” Amina, a 28-year-old supermarket cashier, said.

“Salima, of Arab origin, chipped in: “If you’re between 13 and 20 here, you are automatically a racaille for the cops.” Mr Sarkozy’s use of the word racaille, slang for layabouts, contributed to his demonisation in 2005. Support for Mr Sarkozy came from residents and shopkeepers yesterday, who were furious about the destruction. “The little b******s are completely mindless and determined to smash everything,” the Turkish owner of a looted jewellery store said. “Sarko should come here and clean up.”

At the Villiers Trades Training Centre, where five cars were burnt and where Larami signed up recently for his apprentice training, the management was not prepared to judge the rioters. “I don’t want to give an opinion . . . but when you think of all the money that has been invested here for their future . . .” Josiane Mazerand, the director, said.

Mr Sarkozy returned from China yesterday determined to restore calm. He is expected to show his sympathy by inviting the families of the dead boys to the Élysée Palace today. He also aims to impose order after the Synergie police union said that some youths had fired shotguns and filmed their exploits while other, older men, co-ordinated attacks with two-way radios. At least 30 police had been wounded by shotgun pellets.

Jean-Christophe Lagarde, Mayor of nearby Drancy, said: “You can’t expect things to have changed in two years when the root of the problem goes back 30 years, to when France parked difficult people in estates.”

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