Rioters ram-raided the home of a Paris suburb mayor, set the car alight and launched fireworks at his wife and young children as they fled during a fifth night of nationwide unrest over Tuesday’s police shooting of a teen of North African descent.
Vincent Jeanbrun, 39, the centre-right mayor of the southern suburb of L’Hay-les-Roses, was at the town hall when his house was attacked with his wife Melanie and children asleep inside.
The aggressors drove their vehicle at the suburban house but were halted by a low wall ringing the property’s outdoor terrace, the local public prosecutor said. They then torched their vehicle.
As Jeanbrun’s wife and children, aged 5 and 7, took flight through the backyard, they were targeted with fireworks. Jeanbrun told Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne his wife had had surgery on a broken leg and faced a three-month rehabilitation.
“While attempting to shield them and fleeing the attackers, my wife and one of my children were hurt,” the mayor said.
The local prosecutor told reporters that an investigation into attempted murder had been opened. No suspects have been arrested.
Jeanbrun’s town hall has been the target of attack for several nights since Tuesday’s shooting and has been protected with barbed wire and barricades.
On a walkabout hours after the incident, Jeanbrun met local well-wishers and passed by the town’s covered market which has been wrecked during the unrest.
“Stay strong, Mr. Mayor. We’re with you,” one man told the visibly emotional mayor.
“I didn’t think we’d ever live through something like this,” the mayor told another bystander who wished his wife well.
“It’s pretty disgusting,” she replied.
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.
Earlier, 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.
The protests present a fresh crisis for Macron, who had been hoping to press on with the pledges of his second term after seeing off months of protests that erupted in January over raising the retirement age.
He postponed a state visit to Germany scheduled to begin on Sunday, in a sign of the gravity of the situation in France.
“We are of course looking at (the riots) with concern, and I very much hope, and I am certainly convinced, that the French president will find ways to ensure that this situation improves quickly,” German Chancellor Olaf Scholz told broadcaster ARD.
Macron will head a crisis meeting Sunday with members of his government, according to the Elysee.
In a bid to limit the violence, buses and trams in France have stopped running after 9pm and the sale of large fireworks and inflammable liquids has been banned. Marseille has stopped all urban transport from 6pm.
Macron has urged parents to take responsibility for underage rioters, one-third of whom were “young or very young”.
The unrest has raised concerns abroad, with France hosting the Rugby World Cup in the autumn and the Paris Olympic Games in the summer of 2024.
Culture and entertainment have been disrupted, with singer Mylene Farmer calling off stadium concerts and French fashion house Celine canceling its Paris menswear show.
A 38-year-old policeman has been charged with voluntary homicide over Nahel’s death and has been remanded in custody.
