Grandmother of dead French teen urges calm as mayor's home attacked

economictimes.indiatimes.com:

Paris suburb was attacked with a burning car in a new flaring of violence. The government of President Emmanuel Macron has been battling five nights of violent protests since 17-year-old Nahel M. was shot dead in the Paris suburb of Nanterre on Tuesday by an officer during a traffic check.

The killing of Nahel M, who was of Algerian origin, has revived longstanding accusations of institutional racism within the French police, which rights groups say single out minorities during controls. Seeking to quell what has become one of the biggest challenges to Macron since he took office in 2017, the interior ministry has for the last two nights deployed 45,000 police and gendarmes nationwide, as well as helicopters and armoured vehicles. The interior ministry said 719 people were arrested overnight, around half the figure from the previous night but with intense clashes still reported in several places, including the southern city of Marseille, but calmer elsewhere.

«Stop and do not riot,» Nahel's grandmother, Nadia, told BFM television in a telephone interview, saying that the rioters were only using his death as a «pretext». «I tell the people who are rioting this: Do not smash windows, attack schools or buses. Stop! It's the mums who are taking the bus, it's the mums who walk outside,» she said.

— 'Horror and disgrace' — Politicians condemned the attack on the home of Vincent Jeanbrun, the right-wing mayor of L'Hay-les-Roses outside Paris, in which assailants rammed a burning car into his home with the aim of setting it on fire, prosecutors said. Jeanbrun's wife and children, aged 5 and 7, were at home while the mayor himself was at the town hall to deal with the riots. The wife was «badly injured» sustaining a broken leg,