Rioters clashed with police on Saturday night on the fifth day of unrest following the fatal police shooting of a 17-year-old boy in a Paris suburb, while a local mayor said he was the victim of an assassination attempt by part of the protesters.
Police had arrested 719 people across the country as of early Sunday, following a deployment of 45,000 officers and «gendarmes», the French equivalent of the national guard, in an attempt to control crowds in the unfolding crisis. quickly, the French Interior Ministry said.
Some 45 police and gendarmes were injured overnight, but «their resolute action, coordinated by the prefects, ensured a calmer night,» the ministry said.
More than 1,300 people were arrested on Friday, suggesting the protests are winding down.
But the mayor of the Paris suburb of l’Hay-les-Roses said a burning car hit his home, injuring his wife and one of their children, in an attack he described as an «assassination attempt.»
“At 1:30am, while I was at City Hall as I had been for the last 3 nights, people rammed a car into my house before setting it on fire to burn down my house, where my wife and two young children were. sleeping,» Mayor Vincent Jeanbrun tweeted early Sunday morning.
“My wife and one of my children were injured when they tried to protect themselves and escape from the assailants. It was an unspeakable and cowardly assassination attempt,” she said.
Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin echoed the description of the event as an assassination attempt on Sunday morning, saying on Twitter that “significant judicial police resources” had been mobilized for an investigation.
Police stayed away from the funeral of 17-year-old Nahel in Nanterre on Saturday. He was buried in a hilltop ceremony in suburban Paris, where hundreds of people lined the road to pay respects as his white coffin was carried from a mosque to the cemetery, the Associated Press reported.
Nahel, identified only by his first name, was killed by a single shot by a police officer during a traffic stop Tuesday morning.
The legal team representing the teen’s family has not said whether it believes race was a factor in the shooting. But the event has sparked long-simmering tensions between French authorities and young people living in deprived, multicultural neighborhoods in French cities.
Two helicopters patrolled the skies over the southern port city of Marseille on Saturday night, with gendarmes arriving equipped with an armored vehicle to support local security forces, Bouches-du-Rhône police said in a series of updates. on Twitter on Sunday morning. They added that 71 people had been arrested overnight.
Three shopping centers in the north of the city of Marseille were looted, although security forces managed to disperse the crowd. The companies spent the day filing; Mass gatherings overnight were banned and public transport services closed at 6 p.m. local time, according to social media updates from the city of Marseille and local police.
The protests are fueling a diplomatic crisis for French President Emmanuel Macron as Paris prepares to host the 2024 Summer Olympics. The facade of the aquatics training center was damaged in protests on Thursday, Reuters reported, and buses parked near the construction site were set on fire. .
On Friday Macron decided to postpone a state visit to Germany, the first by a French president in 23 years, according to a statement on the website of the German presidency.
A spokesman for Iran’s foreign ministry called on the French government and police to «take into account the protesters’ demands while exercising restraint and avoiding violence,» the ministry said on Twitter on Saturday.
Some have called on the president to declare a state of emergency, including the far-right National Rally Party and its parliamentary leader Marine Le Pen, who said one should be declared «without further delay.»
In 2005, then-President Nicolas Sarkozy declared a state of emergency after nine days of intense unrest following the electrocution deaths of two teenagers while they were hiding from a police chase at an electrical substation. Two more weeks of clashes followed in his home suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois on the outskirts of Paris and across the country, in the worst civil unrest in France’s recent history.