The grandmother of the teen whose death sparked the riots last week urged calm Sunday, a day after her grandson was laid to rest.
“Stop and do not riot,” she said to France’s BFM TV, which only reported her first name, Nadia.
French President Emmanuel Macron planned to hold a crisis meeting Sunday night in Paris, local media reported, quoting a statement from the presidency. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz also said he was watching “with concern” after Macron postponed a state visit to Germany that was scheduled for Sunday.
Officials in France condemned the attack on Jeanbrun’s home, which he described as an “assassination attempt.” About 1:30 a.m. local time, rioters rammed his property with a vehicle and set it on fire while his wife and two young children were sleeping inside. Jeanbrun said that he was working in the town hall when the attack happened and that his wife and one of his children were injured while trying to escape.
The local prosecutor opened an attempted murder investigation, French media reported.
“The perpetrators will be prosecuted with the utmost firmness,” Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne said in a statement, condemning what she said were “intolerable acts.”
Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin on Sunday described the previous night as “calmer” than the unrest of recent days and praised law enforcement for their “resolute action” in response to the riots.
Still, the government authorized the nationwide deployment of 45,000 police officers for the fifth night on Sunday, with 7,000 patrolling the streets of Paris and its surrounding area. A statement from the Police Prefecture, a unit of the Interior Ministry, said a new decree would allow drones to capture, record and transmit images in Paris and two other regions that border the capital.
The violence erupted Tuesday over the death of Nahel M., a 17-year-old of North African descent who was shot that day by a police officer during a traffic stop in Nanterre, west of Paris. The incident inflamed anti-police sentiment in France, particularly in the suburbs of major cities, or “banlieues” — where minority communities often grapple with discrimination and high unemployment.
Prosecutors said Nahel was driving dangerously and refused to stop the car for an inspection when asked by two traffic police officers on motorcycles. The officers then pulled up alongside Nahel’s car and pointed their guns at him, with one officer firing a bullet that penetrated the teen’s arm and chest.
The officer who fired the shot was detained and is being investigated on a charge of intentional homicide.
Nadia, Nahel’s grandmother, said in her remarks Sunday that she “resents” the police who killed her grandson but doesn’t hate all police officers, adding that she “believes in justice.”
But she issued a stern warning to rioters: “Do not smash windows, attack schools or buses. Stop!” she said, according to Agence France-Presse.
On Sunday, authorities in Beijing said that a bus carrying Chinese tourists was attacked during protests last week. The windows of the bus were smashed, and several people were lightly injured, the Foreign Ministry said.
China’s Consulate in Marseille, in the south of France, “immediately lodged complaints with the French side, demanding that they ensure the personal and property safety of the Chinese citizens,” the ministry said.
He Shuai, head of consular services in Marseille, told China’s Southern Metropolis Daily that the attack against the 41-person group occurred Thursday evening.
A woman who was on the bus told the state-run Hangzhou Transportation 918 radio station that police didn’t come to the group’s rescue during the attack. The woman, identified only by her surname, Ma, said the group was on its way to a hotel in Marseille around 10:30 p.m. when over a dozen masked people dressed in black started hurling bricks at the bus. Some of the attackers attempted to board the bus before being rebuffed by passengers, Ma said, according to the radio station.
Police in the Bouches-du-Rhône department, where Marseille is located, confirmed on a phone call Sunday that a bus containing a Chinese tour group was attacked during the riots in the city but said they could not confirm whether anyone was injured because of the volume of incidents that have taken place in recent days.
Police said the bus was attacked because it was near a construction site where rioters had gone to find more projectiles. The bus was “in the wrong place at the wrong time” and was not targeted specifically because of the passengers’ race, police said.
Rick Noack contributed to this report.
