French premier says country’s ‘apartheid’ needs addressing

New York city mayor Bill de Blasio, left, Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo, right, and Patrick Pelloux, center, a staff member of Charlie Hebdo newspaper, react outside Charlie Hebdo offices, in Paris, Tuesday Jan.20, 2015. Brothers Said and Cherif Kouachi and their friend, Amedy Coulibaly, killed 17 people at the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo, a kosher grocery and elsewhere last week.(AP Photo/Francois Mori) New York city mayor Bill de Blasio, left, Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo, right, and Patrick Pelloux, center, a staff member of Charlie Hebdo newspaper, react outside Charlie Hebdo offices, in Paris, Tuesday Jan.20, 2015. Brothers Said and Cherif Kouachi and their friend, Amedy Coulibaly, killed 17 people at the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo, a kosher grocery and elsewhere last week.(AP Photo/Francois Mori)

By Associated Press January 20, 2015 1 min read

PARIS (AP) – France’s prime minister says the country needs to use the attacks carried out by three French Islamic extremists as a reason to look inward at “a territorial, social, and ethnic apartheid.”

Manuel Valls told journalists Tuesday that fighting hatred, anti-Semitism and racism are urgent, notably in the rundown suburbs that are home to sizable immigrant communities.

Valls, a relatively conservative Socialist whose hard line on Islamic extremism has won many fans, says he wasn’t making excuses, “but we also have to look at the reality of our country.”

Three French-born gunmen with immigrant parents carried out the attacks from Jan. 7-9 in the Paris region, killing a total of 17 people before they themselves died in police raids.