French police arrest 157, firefighter dies trying to douse burning cars
Fewer than 160 people were arrested overnight in connection to riots that have rocked cities across France following the killing of a teenager by a police officer and the death of a firefighter trying to douse burning cars, the interior ministry said on Monday (3 July).
The relative calm following five nights of heavy riots offered some relief to the government of Emmanuel Macron in its fight to regain control of the situation, just months after widespread protests over an unpopular pension reform and a year out from hosting the Olympic Summer Games.
The interior ministry said 157 people were arrested overnight, down from over 700 arrests the night before and over 1,300 on Friday night.
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Three of the 45,000 police officers deployed overnight were injured, the ministry said, while around 350 buildings and 300 vehicles were damaged, according to provisional figures.
A firefighter has died outside of Paris trying to douse vehicles set ablaze during riots, the ministry added.
The grandmother of the teenager shot dead by police during a traffic stop in a Paris suburb said on Sunday she wanted the nationwide rioting triggered by his killing to end.
Since the killing last Tuesday, rioters have torched cars, looted stores and targeted town halls and other properties - including the home of the mayor of a Paris suburb, which was attacked while his wife and children were asleep inside on Saturday.
"This is a real nightmare", Jeanbrun told BFM TV on Monday. "We have been going through a state of siege."
Jeanbrun, who is a member of the conservative Les Republicains, said in the interview he regretted the government had not chosen to declare a state of emergency which he said would have allowed municipal police to better protect the town and its town hall which was also attacked by rioters last week.
"I have myself grown up in L'Hay-des-Roses in these large housing blocks", he said. "We were modest, we hadn't had much, but we wanted to overcome it, we had hope that we would make it with hard work."
At this stage, everything indicates the people who attacked his home were youths from the same suburb, he added.
