PARIS, Nov 12: Police invoked emergency powers to ban public meetings in Paris on Saturday, amid rumours of plans to bring France’s smouldering suburban violence into the centre of the capital.

The measure, which came into force at 10am (0900 GMT) and lasts till Sunday at 8am (0700 GMT), prohibits “all meetings likely to start or fuel disorder.”

The capital was quiet throughout the day, but clashes were reported late afternoon between police and rioters in the southeastern city of Lyon.

According to an AFP reporter at the scene, police used tear-gas to disperse stone-throwing youths in the historic Place Bellecour in the city centre. At least two people were arrested.

It was the first time there have been clashes between police and rioters in the heart of a major French city since the start of the violence in the country’s high-immigration suburbs more than two weeks ago.

In Paris more than 2,000 police and gendarmes patrolled railway stations and the main shopping streets, after authorities intercepted a series of Internet and text messages calling for “acts of violence” in the capital on November 12.

Reinforcements were also due around the Stade de France national stadium in the troubled Seine-St-Denis area of the northern Parisian suburbs, where the French and German national football teams were later to play a friendly match.

The ban on public gatherings was authorised under a 50-year-old emergency law activated by the government on Tuesday and applied across large parts of the country, including Paris. The same law has been used to impose night-time curfews for minors in more than 30 localities nationwide.

The centre of the capital has been largely spared the violence which has raged in France’s poor suburbs, where mainly black and Arab youths have burned cars, destroyed property and attacked police with stones.

Friday night — the 16th of the unrest — saw a slight increase in the number of attacks.—AFP