Global Courant
The mayor of a Paris suburb says his house was rammed by a vehicle and set on fire while his wife and children slept inside during the unrest that has gripped the country since a police officer shot and killed a teenager on Tuesday.
Vincent Jeanbrun, mayor of the southern suburb of L’Hay-les-Roses, said his wife and one of their two young children were injured as they fled the building in the early hours of Sunday.
Jeanbrun, from the conservative party Les Republicains, was not at home at the time but at the town hall to follow the violence. The town hall has been the target of attacks for several nights since the shooting and is secured with barbed wire and barricades.
“At 1:30 a.m., when I was at the town hall like the two previous nights, people raided my house before setting fire to my house, where my wife and my two young children were sleeping,” said Jeanbrun. on his Twitter account.
“While I was trying to protect them and fleeing from the attackers, my wife and one of my children were injured.”
Police officers patrol Saturday evening in front of the Arc de Triomphe on the Champs-Élysées in Paris. (Christophe Ena/The Associated Press)
Jeanbrun said the attack represented a new phase of “horror and disgrace” in the unrest and urged the government to declare a state of emergency.
The local district attorney told reporters that an attempted murder investigation had been opened. No suspects have been arrested.
The prosecutor said the woman was injured when she fled through the home’s backyard.
As night fell over the French capital on Saturday, a small crowd gathered on the Champs-Élysées to protest police brutality and the shooting death of the teenager publicly known by his first name, Nahel, but were met by hundreds of officers with clubs and shields guarding the avenue and its boutiques.
In a less posh area in the north of Paris, protesters set off fireworks and set fire to barricades as police fired back with tear gas and stun grenades.
LOOK | Nationwide protests push France into crisis mode:
Nationwide protests are pushing France into crisis mode
Thousands of officers have been deployed across France to try to quell another night of violent protests that followed the fatal shooting of a teenager by police.
Clashes broke out in the Mediterranean city of Marseille, but seemed less violent than the night before, according to the Interior Ministry. A reinforced police contingent arrested 55 people there.
National arrests were lower than the night before. Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin attributed that to “the determined action of the security forces”. Police made 719 arrests nationwide early Sunday.
A total of more than 3,000 people have been detained since Nahel’s death. The massive police deployment has been welcomed by some frightened residents of the affected neighborhoods and shop owners whose shops have been looted – but it has further frustrated those who see the police crackdown as at the heart of France’s current crisis.
