Police Eject Africans From Paris Church

Police launched a dawn raid on a Roman Catholic church in Paris and ejected 10 Africans who were on the 39th day of a hunger strike for the right to stay in France, witnesses said. But by the end of the day, all of those seized by police had returned to their vigil after refusing to break their fast. Immigrants sheltering in the church said dozens of helmeted riot police carrying rifles and truncheons ran into the Saint Bernard church in the heavily immigrant Goutte d’Or district about 6 a.m. and carried the 10 away on stretchers. “They came prepared for war,” said Tagre Dodo, spokesman for the immigrants. The hunger strikers, chiefly Malians in their late 20s and early 30s, were taken to various hospitals around Paris.