Silence marked the start of a march today led by the families of two teenagers whose death sparked three weeks of rioting in French suburbs a year ago.
Organisers of the silent march in Clichy-sous-Bois, a northeastern suburb of Paris where the unrest began, called for quiet reflection to commemorate the deaths of Bouna Traore and Zyed Benna, who were electrocuted. Witnesses said they died while fleeing police.
An estimated 300 mainly young people from immigrant families walking from the town hall, many wearing T-shirts with the slogan "Dead for Nothing".
A car in flames during a riot in the Paris suburb of Le Blanc-Mesnil in November 2005.
Police have reported an upsurge in violence in the run-up to the anniversary of the disturbances, in which angry youths from mainly immigrant backgrounds burned cars and wrecked shops in protests blamed on poverty and discrimination.
Media attention on France's poor suburbs has been building due to a spate of incidents over the past week in which buses were burnt. Youths on ethnically mixed estates around the capital have also staged several apparently concerted attacks on police in recent weeks.
Some 3,000 people have been arrested in poor suburbs around France for acts of urban violence in the first nine months of this year, some 46 per cent of them minors, Le Figaronewspaper reported, citing police statistics.
In the first six months of 2006, some 21,000 cars were burnt, and some 2,882 attacks registered against the police, fire and ambulance services.