Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin called a meeting for 10:00 am (0900 GMT) on Monday with Sarkozy and other officials to discuss security on public transport, his office said.

The woman, a student identified as Mama Galledou, was on the bus with some 10 other passengers when it was forcibly boarded by at least three teenagers wearing hoods. They doused the inside of the vehicle with flammable liquid and set it on fire before running away.

Although the driver and other passengers escaped in time, the woman was unable to do so and suffered burns to 70 percent of her body.

French President Jacques Chirac on Sunday expressed his "horror" at the attack.

In a telephone call to the family of the 26-year-old woman, Chirac spoke of his "horror at this despicable act" and vowed that everything would be done to bring the perpetrators to justice, his office said.

Other politicians also expressed their shock, with the opposition Socialist party quick to cast it as evidence of what it said was Sarkozy's failure to improve security in dangerous neighbourhoods.

The Socialists' leading contender for next year's presidential race, Segolene Royal, expressed "horror and consternation", describing the young people's actions as "urban guerilla war", while also blasting Sarkozy for his "failure".

A spokesman at the Marseille hospital told AFP the victim was in a "very worrying" state between life and death.

Elsewhere in France, other vehicles were torched, including another bus in a poor suburb west of Paris, but no other serious casualties were reported.

There were overnight skirmishes with police, who said 46 people were arrested, most of them in the Paris area, and two officers were slightly hurt. The incidents followed earlier violence and bus attacks on Friday.

In the western Paris suburb of Trappes, a gang beat up a bus driver and forced his passengers to get out before they set the vehicle alight, destroying it. Police and youths also clashed in the northeastern city of Reims and in Toulouse in the southwest overnight Saturday.

In the northern city of Lille, 25 cars belonging to the electricity company EDF were torched in their compound, and dozens of other private vehicles were burned in other areas.

The central police service nevertheless said Saturday night was "relatively calm" nationwide.

The violence recalled the riots that raged in mostly poor suburbs around the country last year -- the worst incident of civil strife in France in four decades.

Gangs of youths -- most of them from families of African and Arab origin -- torched more than 10,000 cars and firebombed 300 buildings in around 275 towns.

Social alienation, high unemployment, racial discrimination and tensions over integrating France's sizeable Muslim community were all cited as reasons for the riots.

Fears that the still-tense suburbs could explode again this year prompted the government to draft 4,000 extra police into areas outside Paris on the weekend.

Transport Minister Dominique Perben will also attend Monday's security meeting in Paris, along with top transport officials including heads of the SNCF national rail company, and the Paris regional rail service.

Officials in Marseille emphasised that the bus attack in their city was an isolated act and not indicative of more widespread violence.

The public transport authority in Marseille said services would be back to normal there on Monday.

Howard said last month when he announced plans for the test that these values include democracy, the rule of law and the equality of men and women.

The prime minister denied that the move was aimed particularly at Muslims, but he has also expressed fears that Muslims who do not integrate fully into Australian society could launch terror attacks in the country.

Several leaders among Australia's 300,000 Muslims moved swiftly to distance themselves from Hilali's remarks last week, making it clear they feared a backlash from non-Muslims.

An editorial in Sunday's mass-circulation Sun-Herald newspaper supported their concerns, saying: "Al-Hilali has made too many outrageous, inflammatory statements for this one to be forgiven."

The paper, noting the "tension between the Muslim community and the rest of Australia", joined widespread calls for Hilali, who has the title Mufti of Australia, to be sacked.

Muslim Council of New South Wales chairman Neil Kadomi, who supports moves to depose Hilali, told AFP that Islam did not contradict Australian values.

"Islam stands for racial harmony, working for a living, freedom of speech, freedom of religion and racial equality and gender equality," he said.

"When every politician wants to score a point he picks on the Muslim community," he said. "It's unfair. Why pick on Muslims -- why not Jews, Christians?"

The government's drive for a citizenship test has also been criticised as affecting more than just the Muslim community, threatening a multicultural society forged by centuries of immigration.

"It's undermining and insulting to all Australians to have the charge being led by a prime minister who has never been noted for his acceptance of multiculturalism," said Edna McGill of the Ethnic Council of New South Wales.

For two centuries Australia had benefited from successive waves of immigrants, said McGill, an Australian of Scottish heritage.

"To say suddenly we don't want those people unless they make some formal commitment to conform to what politicians say they should be doing is ridiculous."

Howard's plans simply failed to reflect a society that was much more diverse and inclusive than he portrayed, McGill said, adding that not everybody in Australia had to worship sport.

This touches an issue that has provided endless material for satirists and cartoonists here -- what exactly are "Australian values".

Many have suggested that a love of booze, bikinis and barbecues would have to feature on the list.

A cartoon in The Sydney Morning Herald showed immigration officials timing how long it took prospective settlers to down a six-pack of beers, with worried looking Muslim men and women waiting in line.

The paper also reported that Howard had not ruled out the possibility of his major sporting passion, cricket, being included in the test.

Under the headline "Cricket is NOT an insect. Go Home", the paper quoted Howard as saying that to understand Australia's history it might be necessary to have some knowledge of the arcane game.

Comedian Dave Hughes said in the Sun-Herald magazine a week before the latest row erupted: "All new Australians should have to have respect for girls in bikinis. They should have to cherish them

"Their only god is to be sport. It can be any sport they like as long as they are fanatical about it."

Debris from the shattered plane, body parts and personal belongings of passengers were strewn over a wooded area the size of a soccer field where the plane went down, about two miles from the end of the runway at the airport in the capital of the oil-rich West African nation.

Smoke rose from the plane's mangled and smoldering fuselage as rescue workers pulled out burned corpses. About 50 bodies were gathered in a corner of the site. The tail of the plane was hanging from a tree.

Sam Adurogboye, an Aviation Ministry spokesman, said the 23-year-old Boeing 737-2B7 crashed just one minute after takeoff. He said the cause of the crash was unknown.

Witnesses said it was raining around the time the aircraft took off. Rains subsided later, but skies remained overcast.

Adurogboye said the plane was carrying 104 passengers and crew members, and he knew of six survivors. "Obviously the rest are feared dead," he said.

Emergency workers recovered the last of the bodies about six hours after the crash.

The aircraft, owned by the private Nigerian airline Aviation Development Co., was headed to the northwest city of Sokoto, about 500 miles northwest of Abuja, state radio said.

In a radio announcement, the Sokoto state government said the sultan of Sokoto, Muhammadu Maccido, died in the crash. Maccido was the head of the National Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs, which determines when Muslim fasts should begin and end and decides policy issues for Nigeria's overwhelmingly Sunni Muslims.

Mustapha Shehu, spokesman for the Sokoto state government, said the sultan's son, Muhammed Maccido, a senator, also was on the flight, along with Abdulrahman Shehu Shagari, son of former Nigerian President Shehu Shagari, who was in office between 1979 and 1983.

About half of Nigeria's 130 million people are Muslims. The country is the most populous in Africa and the continent's leading oil exporter.

At the airport in Abuja, security officials tried to contain a crush of people seeking information about friends or family aboard the plane.

President Olusegun Obasanjo ordered an immediate investigation into the cause of the crash, his spokeswoman Remi Oyo said in a statement.

Oyo said Obasanjo was "deeply and profoundly shocked and saddened ... he offers condolences for all Nigerians, especially family, friends and associates of those who may have been on board."

The Nigerian airline ADC last suffered a crash in November 1996, when one of its jets plunged into a lagoon outside Nigeria's main city, Lagos, killing all 143 aboard.

Last year, two planes flying domestic routes crashed within seven weeks of each other, killing 224 people.

Nigeria's air industry is notoriously unsafe. On Oct. 22, 2005, a Boeing 737-200 plane belonging to Bellview airlines crashed soon after takeoff from the country's main city of Lagos, killing all 117 people aboard. On Dec. 10, a McDonnell Douglas DC-9 plane operated by Sosoliso Airlines crashed while approaching the oil city of Port Harcourt, killing 107 people, most of them schoolchildren going home for Christmas.

Earlier this month, authorities released a report blaming the Sosoliso crash on bad weather and pilot error. The investigation of the Bellview crash is still continuing.

After last year's air crashes, Obasanjo vowed to overhaul Nigeria's airline industry, blaming some of the industry's problems on corruption. Airlines were subjected to checks for air-worthiness and some planes were grounded.

Of the seven survivors who were taken to hospital; six were in stable condition and one was in intensive care, Abuja's National hospital said. State radio said the weather was bad as the plane took off. Only its tail, an engine, and part of a wing were still recognisable at the crash site, which was littered with smouldering fires, boxes and bags.

The office of the president, Olusegun Obasanjo, issued a statement calling for a full investigation into what is the fourth major air crash in Nigeria in just over a year. Reuters

Silva had raised spending on social programs without hiking taxes, cementing the support of the poor. A family allowance program that provides payments to 11 million poor families, provided the children stay in school and are vaccinated, was very popular.

In the campaign, he said he would reduce the gap between rich and poor and focus on education.

Alckmin highlighted election corruption scandals at Silva's Workers Party, but Silva was not implicated personally.

Alckmin did very well in the first round on Oct. 1, when he forced the runoff election Sunday by taking enough votes to prevent Silva from getting the 50 per cent plus one necessary to win.

Silva voted in an industrial area of Sao Paulo where he had lived when he was a union leader. Alckmin voted in a well-off neighbourhood.

Voters also cast ballots for governor in the 10 states where runoff votes were necessary.

There are, however, countless reports of police brutality coming from the streets. The PFP are entering homes and arresting random citizens, as well as the leaders of the APPO. They are using teargas released from helicopters, water cannons, and water mixed with an unidentified chemical that burns the skin to try and break the people's will. For most of the day, the people of Oaxaca resisted completely peacefully, lying down in the path of the PFP, and continually getting driven back by violence and brutality.

Then at 2:30, (Oaxaca time) at least 1000 people stood up to the advance of 300 PFP officers in 20 buses crawling towards the center zocalo, which protesters have occupied and used as a public meeting space since May. Protesters punctured tires of 2 of the vehicles and smashed the windows with rocks, forcing the outnumbered police to retreat.

Thousands of valiant members of the Popular Assemblies of the People of Oaxaca, an open, public and directly democratic decision-making body that has been in control of the state of Oaxaca, Mexico since June, have succeeded in preventing hundreds of PFP from seizing the center zocalo of Oaxaca's capital, Oaxaca city. As of 4:55, Oaxaca time, according to El Universal, the police, who had invaded and occupied the zocalo with 4 stolen buses, have been driven 4 blocks out of the center. Protesters have popped the buses' tires and are using them to blockade the zocalo.

According to an APPO update, at 5:00, the PFP using helicopters kidnapped a 36-year-old man, and many others including women and children, beating them widely in Love Park, which is 7 blocks from the center of the city. At 5:09 pm, Oaxaca time, the PFP shot a man at point blank. According to the APPO's website, he was one of tens of thousands guarding the bridge to the Technological Institute, which is under police siege.

The people of Oaxaca are focusing their defenses on two strategic locations, the center zocalo and, more importantly, the only remaining APPO occupied radio station, Radio Universidad, both of which are under attack from the PFP.

Federal forces have had Oaxaca City, a strong-hold for the new movement of the Popular Assemblies, completely surrounded since Friday when right-wing paramilitaries in plainclothes attacked unarmed people at a couple of the barricades. The attacks killed 4- NYC Indymedia journalist Brad Will, and Oaxaca residents Emilio Alonso Fabián, Eudocia Olivera Díaz, and Esteban Zurita López-and injured 11. The paramilitaries have been identified as members of Ulises Ruiz Ortiz's PRI party: two members of Santa Lucia's city council, two of that town's police officers and a former justice of the peace from another town.

Vicente Fox, outgoing Mexican President who has long vowed to "restore order" to Oaxaca before he steps down on December 1st, used the PRI's cowardly violence as an excuse to invade Oaxaca and repress the directly-democratic APPO. Even if he succeeds in this repression, however, he will only bolster the resolve of the movement for Popular Assemblies, which is looking to take decision-making power from the hands of politicians and bring it back to the people in the form of public, open, direct democracy (popular assemblies). Right now, a third of the Mexican states have built their own popular assemblies, many of which have mobilized today in support of the people's struggle in Oaxaca.