French city Amiens became the first to use emergency powers to declare curfew overnight Tuesday banning unaccompanied under-16 year youths to go out from 10:00 PM to 6:00 AM (21:00 GMT to 05:00 GMT).

The prefecture of Amiens announced the curfew hours after French ministers meeting approved a decree giving powers to local governments to impose curfew if they consider the measures necessary.

The measure was to come into effect at midnight (23:00 GMT).

The announcement came in the wake of twelve days violence leaving more than 6,000 cars burned. More than 1,500 people have been detained after the violence sparked on Oct. 27 in northeast Paris where two teenagers were accidentally electrocuted to flee police check.

The 1955 emergency powers law allows state-appointed governors, or prefects, to "forbid the movement of people and vehicles in places and times fixed by decree" and ban "meetings likely to provoke or fuel disorder".

It also allows the authorities to "order house searches at any time of day or night" and to control "press and publications of all kinds" and permits the interior minister to issue house arrests for people "whose activity is dangerous for public safety."

The law was enacted in 1955 to calm disturbances in the French-controlled Algeria that triggered the Algerian war of independence.

The resorting to the law was criticized by French left-wing newspaper Le Monde, saying the youth may think that "after 50 years France intends to treat them exactly as it did their grandparents".

(Xinhua News Agency November 9, 2005)