France protests ease as president Macron prepares to meet leaders of parliament

Paris: President Emmanuel Macron will meet the leaders of both houses of parliament as violent protests in France over the police shooting of teenager Nahel M appeared to be easing after five nights of unrest during which thousands of people have been arrested amid widespread destruction.

Police made 49 arrests nationwide on Sunday, French media reported, citing the interior ministry, down significantly from 719 arrests the day before, and 1,300 on Friday.

Macron will also meet on Tuesday with the mayors of 220 towns and cities affected by the protests, his office said, after a crisis meeting on Sunday night with government ministers, The Guardian reported. 

The president had been due to fly to Germany on Sunday for a state visit that was cancelled due to the ongoing crisis.

Meanwhile, the interior minister, Gerald Darmanin, announced the death of a 24-year-old firefighter, who died tackling a blaze in an underground car park in the Paris suburb of Saint-Denis after several vehicles were set alight on Sunday evening.

On Saturday, rioters rammed a burning car into the home of Vincent Jeanbrun, the mayor of L’Hay-les-Roses, nine miles (15 km) south of Paris, at about 1.30 a.m. while his family were asleep. Jeanbrun was at the town hall at the time, but his wife and one of his two children, aged five and seven, were injured as they fled. Jeanbrun’s wife sustained a broken leg.

The ebbing violence follows an appeal for calm from the grandmother of Nahel, the 17-year-old killed on Tuesday during a police traffic stop in a Paris suburb, the Guardian said.

“Stop rioting, stop destroying,” the grandmother, named as Nadia, told BFMTV. “I say this to those who are rioting: do not smash windows, attack schools and buses. Stop. It’s mothers who take those buses.” The rioters, mostly minors, were “using Nahel as an excuse,” she said. “We want things to calm down.” Her grandson, identified by only his first name, was buried on Saturday.

More than 3,000 people have been detained since Tuesday, after the mass deployment of 45,000 police officers around the country. Over the weekend, Darmanin said the deployment would be unchanged, after protesters torched cars, looted shops, damaged infrastructure and clashed with police on Saturday night.

The Paris police chief said it was too early to say the unrest had been quashed, the Guardian reported. “There was evidently less damage, but we will remain mobilised in the coming days. We are very focused; nobody is claiming victory,” Laurent Nunez said.