French parliament approved Tuesday a bill to extend the state of emergency for three months, with 346 votes in favour and 148 against.

The law bill is to be presented to the French Senate on Wednesday before going into effect.

While presenting the government's bill in the lower house, or National Assembly, French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy said the extension was necessary because "even though there appears to be a progressive return to calm, nothing has been definitively achieved."

French government adopted last Tuesday a decree to invoke the 1955 emergency powers law, which gives local authorities, or prefects, the powers to impose from Wednesday curfews, order house arrests and searches, and ban public gatherings.

Over the past week curfews were imposed in some 40 localities

and two temporary bans on public gatherings were used in Paris and Lyon at the weekend.

Violence reduced gradually last week. Overnight Tuesday, the number of cars burned across the country diminished to 162 from Sunday night's 271, compared with more than 1,300 at the peak of the riots, according to French national police.

More than 8,000 vehicles have been torched and businesses and public buildings wrecked and dozens of policemen injured mainly by black and Arab youths since the beginning of the urban violence, which started on Oct. 27 after the accidental electrocution of two teenages, one of Tunisian, the other of Mauritanian origin, in their fleeing from police identity check.

Source: Xinhua