DPA
Paris
The grandmother of 17-year-old Nahel called on Sunday for calm after days of unrest in France over his death during a police traffic check.
“Fortunately, the police officers are there. The people who are breaking things right now, I tell them ‘stop it.’ They used Nahel as an excuse,” she told BFMTV.
While she is angry with the officer who shot her grandson, she does not want to generalize. He will be punished like anyone else, said Nadia, whose last name like that of Nahel is not being published.
“I have faith in the judiciary,” she remarked, adding that people should stay calm and not destroy everything.
French police arrested at least 719 people on Saturday night during further rioting over alleged police brutality, according to an Interior Ministry assessment.
The ministry tweeted that 45 police officers were injured in the renewed rioting, which could enter its sixth day on Sunday night.
But thanks to the deployment of 45,000 police officers and thousands of firefighters, Saturday was a “calmer night” than the previous day, the tweet said.
Paris, Marseille and Lyon were among the cities most affected on Saturday night, with riots, looting and damage to property.
Police in Paris cleared the city’s famous Champs Élysées boulevard using tear gas, Le Figaro newspaper reported.
Rioters also rammed a mayor’s house with a car and set it alight overnight into Sunday while his family were sleeping, according to Vincent Jeanbrun, mayor of L’Haÿ-les-Roses, outside Paris.
He said his wife and one of his children was injured. The public prosecutor’s office opened an investigation into attempted murder, according to the television station BFMTV. page 5
