France: Mayors targeted in fifth night of protests across France – Times of India

PARIS: The mayor of a suburb of Paris said on Sunday that protesters had rammed a burning car into his home and then set the vehicle on fire, injuring his wife and one of his children, as violent demonstrations across France over the police killing of a 17-year-old stretched into a fifth night. “Last night, a milestone was reached in terms of horror and ignominy,” the mayor, Vincent Jeanbrun, of L’Hay-les-Roses, a town to the south of the capital, tweeted. In a separate attack, the police said that rioters had tried to set fire to a car belonging to another mayor, in the town of La Riche, near the city of Tours, southwest of Paris.
Overall violence, however, appeared to lessen from previous nights. Police made 719 arrests nationwide by early Sunday following a mass security deployment aimed at quelling France’s worst social upheaval in years. On Friday night, over 1,300 were arrested and More than 3,000 people have been detained overall. The crisis has posed a new challenge to President Macron’s leadership and exposed deep-seated discontent in low-income neighbourhoods over discrimination and lack of opportunity. The unrest prompted Macron to delay what would have been the first state visit to Germany by a French president in 23 years.
Tensions remained high after the funeral the day before for the 17-year-old, named publicly only as Nahel, of Algerian and Moroccan descent, who was fatally shot on Tuesday during a traffic stop in Nanterre, a Paris suburb. In a statement on Twitter early Sunday, the interior ministry said that 45 police officers had been injured. Some 45,000 police officers had been deployed across the country on Saturday, a number similar to the night before.
In L’Hay-les-Roses, Jeanbrun said he was at the town hall, when a car was driven at his house at 1.30am while his wife and children, aged 5 and 7, were sleeping. His wife and one of his children were injured as they tried to run away, he said. Interior minister Gerald Darmanin called the attack “cowardly and terrible” and said an attempted-murder investigation had been opened.