TV crews attacked in Paris suburb

CLICHY-SOUS-BOIS, France (Reuters) - French police urged journalists on Friday to be vigilant in some riot-hit suburbs of Paris after several TV crews were attacked and robbed by youths just days before France's presidential election.

In Clichy-Sous-Bois, where week-long riots started in 2005, three TV crews were attacked this week, with the assailants stealing cameras and other filming equipment, police said.

"There is a slight problem with the image of journalists. It's true that they are not welcome in Clichy-Sous-Bois," said Samir Mihi of the Association for Liberty Equality Fraternity Together United (ACLEFEU), which was set up by youths from riot-hit suburbs.

In one case, two men, one of them wearing a motorcycle helmet, attacked a Voice of America cameraman with wooden clubs and took his camera. The man was taken to hospital with head injuries, a journalist on the team said.

"We are trying to inform journalists so that they don't go to this sector (difficult areas) without protection," a police source said.

France's ethnically diverse suburbs have been a campaign issue ahead of Sunday's first round vote of the presidential election, and many camera crews and journalists have traveled to high-rise housing estates for their reports.

"There's tension ... We're vigilant," an official at the Clichy town hall said. "Everyone wants to film the polling stations in Clichy-Sous-Bois."

"We're doing all we can for things to go well with the journalists," the official said, but also urged reporters to act respectfully. "They must not come here like to a zoo ... Some inhabitants can feel exasperated by all these cameras."

ACLEFEU's Mihi, however, told Reuters the town hall was exaggerating the scale of the problem, adding that there had been only "small problems with journalists" because of the bad light that the town had been cast in following the riots.

Many journalists had changed their opinion about the town, he said.

"They have come themselves and many have been rather surprised by the setting, which was nothing like the very, very aggressive image that some were trying to show through footage."

Police said they had been informed there would be many journalists in Clichy on Sunday, but officials were taking no particular security measures. "We're applying the same measures as we do to the rest of the territory," the police source said.

Cameras have been a particular target for gangs of youth in the suburbs since the 2005 riots, the source said, adding youngsters were trying to sell back equipment to their victims afterwards.

France's worst urban unrest in 40 years was sparked in Clichy-Sous-Bois in November 2005, when two teenagers were electrocuted in an electricity sub-station after apparently fleeing police.

(Additional reporting by Paule Bonjean)