France sees 5th night of rioting over teen’s killing

The protesters also rammed a car into the mayor’s house in a Paris suburb

Young rioters clashed with police into early Sunday and targeted a mayor’s home with a burning car as France saw a fifth night of unrest sparked by the police killing of a teenager, but overall violence appeared to lessen compared with previous nights. Police made 719 arrests nationwide by early Sunday after a mass security deployment aimed at quelling France’s worst social upheaval in years.

The crisis posed a new challenge to President Emmanuel Macron’s leadership and exposed deep-seated discontent in low-income neighborhoods over discrimination and lack of opportunity. The 17-year-old whose death on Tuesday spawned the anger was laid to rest Saturday in a Muslim ceremony in Nanterre, a Paris suburb where emotions over his loss remain raw. He has been identified publicly only by his first name, Nahel.

Police officers with batons and shields patrolling Paris. Pic/AP

As night fell on Saturday over the French capital, a small crowd gathered on the Champs-Elysees to protest his death and police violence but met hundreds of officers with batons and shields guarding the avenue and its boutiques. In a less chic neighborhood of northern Paris, protesters set off firecrackers and lit barricades on fire as police shot back with tear gas and stun grenades.

Meanwhile, the mayor of a Paris suburb said his home was attacked early Sunday morning, terming it “an assassination attempt” on his family. “At 1.30 am, while I was at the city hall like the past three nights, individuals rammed their car upon my residence before setting fire to it to burn my house, inside which my wife and my two young children slept,” said mayor Vincent Jeanbrun of L’Hay-les-Roses. “While trying to escape the attackers, my wife and one of my children were injured,” he said.

Windows smashed in Swiss city, six teens detained

Seven people were detained, most of them teenagers, after several shop windows in the Swiss city of Lausanne were smashed as young people gathered in an “echo” of riots in neighboring France, police said on Sunday. More than 100 people gathered in downtown Lausanne, in French-speaking western Switzerland, on Saturday evening, responding to several appeals on social media linked to the violence in France. Several shop windows and a shop door were broken.

719
No of arrests made nationwide by early Sunday

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