A military-style police operation quelled violence in outer Paris yesterday as President Sarkozy promised no mercy for council estate youths who shot at police officers.

After flying overnight from China, the President moved quickly to take charge of operations against the latest ethnic rioting in France. He drove straight from the airport, which is close to the scene of the violence, to two hospitals to visit injured police officers and firefighters.

“Super Sarko”, who forged his reputation as an iron-fisted Interior Minister for four years before his election as President last spring, told the police that the full might of the State would be applied to youths who rioted for three nights through Villiers-le-Bel and neighbouring towns.

“Let’s be absolutely clear. Those who take it upon themselves to shoot at police will find themselves in the assizes,” Mr Sarkozy said, referring to the jury courts that try only murder and other grave crimes. Shooting at police “has a name — attempted murder”, he added.

Mr Sarkozy, who defeated public sector strikers before leaving for China, appeared determined to show that “the boss is back in charge”, as a radio commentator put it.

More than a thousand officers were sent into Villiers on Tuesday to halt the gunfire and fighting that injured 120 officers on Sunday and Monday. On those nights a dozen officers were wounded by shotgun blasts in a potentially deadly escalation from the usual projectiles that are used.

The armoured riot police and snatch squads are being backed up by helicopters with searchlights and units from RAID, the heavily armed national police intervention force that is used for tactical assault and hostage situations. Six youths have been given prison sentences in fast-track trials for looting or attacking police.

An angry Mr Sarkozy was reported to have given orders by telephone to Michèle Alliot-Marie, the Interior Minister, to prevent the riots from spreading as a similar outbreak did in 2005. On Tuesday night “only” 138 cars were burnt in Villiers and around France. About 100 cars are torched in an average French day.

The President met the families of two teenage boys who were killed on Sunday in an accident with a police car that sparked the riots. He told them that he had ordered a judicial investigation to determine the events of the accident, in which the teenagers’ motorcycle collided with the patrol car.

Local residents were angered when a police investigation cleared the officers, reporting that the teenagers, aged 15 and 16, sped into an intersection, unlicensed and not wearing helmets. The new inquiry will decide whether manslaughter charges might be justified. The families, originally from Morocco and Mali, were invited to the Élysée Palace, where Mr Sarkozy “showed sympathy and listened to them for a long time”, Jean-Pierre Mignard, their lawyer, said. The inquiry would allow the parents to “participate actively in finding out the truth. Nothing will be hidden,” he said.

Yesterday, the Le Monde newspaper contradicted police claims that the officers’ car had not been damaged and moved by local residents immediately after the crash. The President called a ministerial session on the riots. However, it remained uncertain whether he would visit the scene of the violence. His presence would reassure police and many local residents, but it might provoke the youths who see “Sarko” as their enemy. While the Socialist opposition continued to accuse him of insensitivity to the despair in the urban districts, Mr Sarkozy also ordered his Government to press on with a plan to boost education, job prospects and transport links for residents. Fadela Amara, the Housing Minister, said the plan, to be announced in January, would not be an attempt “once again to throw billions at the suburbs, but to target the real human problems”.

Times Recommends

• Fish and chip shops ‘selling cobbler as cod’
• T in the Park festival at Kinross
• How to get Madonna’s Thighs