Unrest sparked by an incident in which a motorcyclist hit a police car in a Paris suburb has been reported across France, highlighting growing tensions caused by a strict lockdown.
In a fourth night of violence and vandalism, a primary school was on Tuesday evening partially destroyed by a fire in a northwest suburb of Paris and police in another district said that fireworks had been aimed at them.
In Toulouse, several garbage cans and vehicles were set alight, and incidents were also reported in Strasbourg, Bordeaux, Versailles and Lyon.
The unrest spread after a trail motorbike ridden at speed on Saturday last week by a man not wearing a helmet hit the door of a police car, which was stopped at a red light in the suburb of Villeneuve-la-Garenne.
Witnesses said that an officer had deliberately opened the door, which the police denied.
Investigations have begun.
The 30-year-old unnamed motorcyclist who sustained a broken leg on Tuesday evening issued a plea for calm to those on the streets through his lawyer.
“I understand that you’ve smashed up cars. I ask you to go home and calm down,” he said in a video filmed in a hospital.
French lawmaker Stephane Peu, who representse the Seine-Saint-Denis area outside of Paris — home to some of France’s most run-down outer-city housing projects — on Wednesday told a legislative committee: “Compared to what sadly happens far too often and too easily, the number of people involved and the seriousness of the incidents is still quite low.”
The Paris police prefecture has banned the purchase or possession of fireworks in the city and three surrounding departments until Monday next week.
In the Rillieux-la-Pape commune of Lyon, a group of 30 young people on Monday evening destroyed a bus stop, burned garbage cans, smashed the windshields of several cars and damaged the entrance of the primary school, reportedly shouting: “That’s for Villeneuve-la-Garenne.”
Describing the young people as “cretins, idiots and imbeciles,” Rillieux-la-Pape Mayor Alexandre Vincendet said: “They wouldn’t even know where to find Villeneuve-la-Garenne on a map... It’s just an excuse to smash things up.”
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
RSS