France riots: Sixth night of unrest as numbers arrested since fatal shooting pass 3,000

Fall in arrests after grandmother of teenager shot dead by police calls for calm
TOPSHOT-FRANCE-CRIME-POLICE-DEMO
Demonstrators run as French police officers use tear gas in Paris on Sunday, July 2.
AFP via Getty Images
Matt Watts3 July 2023

At least 78 people were arrested in a sixth night of unrest in France following the fatal shooting of a teenager by police.

The number held was a sharp drop on the 719 arrested in the previous 24 hours, but brought the numbers arrested since the start of rioting to more then 3,000.

Nationwide protests have erupted since the killing of the teenager, named Nahel, by police during a traffic stop on Tuesday in the Paris suburb of Nanterre.

His grandmother appealed for calm on Sunday, accusing rioters of using the death of her grandson as an “excuse” for engaging in violence and looting.

She told French broadcaster BFM TV: “Fortunately the police are here. The people who are destroying, I tell them to ‘stop’. They are using Nahel as an excuse.

“I am tired, I can’t take it anymore, I can’t sleep, I turned off the TV, I turned everything off I don’t want to listen to this anymore.”

French President Emmanuel Macron chaired a special security meeting on Sunday as protests continued

The unrest forced him to delay the start of the first state visit to Germany in 23 years.

An official present at the security meeting said Mr Macron plans to meet with the leaders of both houses of parliament on Monday, followed by discussions with mayors in the 220 towns and cities affected by the protests.

He also wants to start a detailed, longer-term assessment of the reasons that led to the unrest - which exposed deep-seated discontent in low-income neighbourhoods - the official told the Associated Press.

45,000 police officers were deployed in the streets of France overnight.

Skirmishes erupted in the Mediterranean city of Marseille on Sunday, but appeared less intense than the night before, according to the interior ministry.

The mayor of L’Hay-les-Roses, a suburb on the outskirts of Paris, condemned protesters who rammed his home with a burning car in the early hours on Sunday.

Vincent Jeanbrun, who was not at home at the time, said his property was “ram-raided” and set alight while his wife and two children, aged five and seven, were asleep.

His wife broke her leg and one of the youngsters was injured as they fled the building through the back garden. Mr Jeanbrun called it “an assassination attempt of unspeakable cowardice”.

Hundreds of police and firefighters have been injured since the start of the violence.

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