In a television interview aimed at restoring the authority of the state, Dominique de Villepin, the Prime Minister, said last night that the Cabinet would meet to invoke a rarely used 1955 law on curfews. The measure will enable prefects, the state administrators in each département, to order residents to stay indoors “everywhere that it is necessary in order to bring about peace and ensure the safety of the population ”, M de Villepin said.

One mayor in the Paris suburbs jumped the gun and ordered his own curfew last night but it was not enforced by police. The Prime Minister said the violence was “unacceptable and inexcusable . . . the response of the state will be firm and just”.

An additional 1,500 police reservists would bring to 9,500 the number of riot police handling the unrest. He ruled out use of the armed forces “at this stage”.

Similar warnings of toughness came from President Chirac on Sunday but did nothing to deter rioters from burning cars, several schools and churches in the following hours.

More than 4,700 vehicles have been set alight, 1,200 people arrested and 600 suspects detained in custody.

M de Villepin mixed his message of firmness with the announcement of measures aimed at easing the plight of the ethnic Arab and African minorities on the housing estates where young men have been running riot since October 28. Without giving any figures, he said that a programme to build more humane council blocks would be accelerated, scholarships for bright children would be tripled and all school drop-outs would be offered training and apprenticeships from 14.

Measures to stamp out discrimination over housing and jobs would also be intensified. M de Villepin said the Government was aware that French citizens from the ethnic minorities suffered because they were made to feel different. “We have to respond to this,” he said.

It was unclear if the 20-minute interview with the elegant and patrician Prime Minister would greatly influence the rioters, who M de Villepin said were a mixture of youngsters “competing with each other as a game” and criminals who were benefiting from their rampages.

The rioting had restarted in Toulouse even before his appearance on television. One man died yesterday, the first death of a victim of the rioters. Jean-Jacques Le Chenadec, 61, died in hospital after being beaten into a coma by a hooded youth last week in the northern Paris suburb of Stains.

In the first serious firearm incident ten riot police were lightly wounded on Sunday night by youths firing fine-grain birdshot in the southern Paris suburb of Grigny. Two remained in hospital last night.

Nicolas Sarkozy, the French Interior Minister, insisted that nothing would halt his Government’s drive to restore order. “We will crack down and we will prevail. The Republic cannot retreat. Either we have Republican order or the rule of gangs," he said. After that, the State would address the grievances of the ethnic minorities whose teenage boys have been on the rampage for 12 days, he said.

To show the State’s determination, judges were sent to special court sessions at Bobigny, north of Paris, where 45 rioters were being tried last night. Michel Gaudin, chief of the National Police, said: “We are witnessing a sort of shock wave that is spreading across the country.”

Times Recommends

• 'New York has lost its edge'
• Copenhagen will fail – and quite right too
• More than 17,000 new underwater species found