FRANCE: The French Government said Sunday that hundreds more had been arrested in a fifth night of rioting on Saturday sparked by the Police killing of a 17-year-old, as Police deployed reinforcements to flashpoint cities around the country. Over 2,500 people have been arrested as rioters have torched 2,000 vehicles since the start of the unrest.
The French Interior Ministry said that 522 Police officers and gendarmes have been injured. It also said 1,311 arrests were made overnight and suggested that the ferocity of the protests was waning. Over 2,500 fires had been reported on public roads and that there had been 234 incidents of damage or fire in buildings.
In a sign of how seriously the Government is taking the demonstrations, President Emmanuel Macron cancelled a state visit to Germany that was to begin on Sunday because he “wants to stay in France in the coming days”, the Elysée Palace said on Saturday.
A tense atmosphere lingered in Nanterre on Saturday following the funeral of a French teenager who was fatally shot by police in the Paris suburb earlier this week.
He said the deployment of armoured vehicles, helicopters and 45,000 Police officers, as well as the high number of arrests, had caused a “psychological shock” that deterred people from rioting.
The killing on Tuesday of Nahel Merzouk, 17, who was of Algerian and Moroccan descent stoked a wave of anger in the Paris suburb where he lived that has spread to cities and towns across France.
It exacerbated tensions between the Police and young people in low-income areas that are home to minorities and immigrants, who face racial profiling by police and discrimination in housing and job opportunities, according to official studies. - CNN
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