Macron to receive 220 mayors after wave of protests

French President Emmanuel Macron will receive some 220 mayors at the Élysée Palace this Tuesday (4) after a week of violent protests against the death of a 17-year-old teenager, killed by police on the outskirts of Paris, last Tuesday (27).

The meeting is scheduled for 12:00 local time, according to official information. The French president summoned the mayors after demonstrators threw a burning car at the home of the mayor of L’Haÿ-les-Roses, Vincent Jeanbrun, early this Sunday (2).

Yesterday, a firefighter died trying to extinguish the fire that engulfed a parking lot in the Saint-Denis region, on the outskirts of Paris. Corporal Dorian Damelincourt, 24, suffered a heart attack after inhaling the smoke.

Damelincourt was rescued by other firefighters and taken to the military hospital, but he did not resist.

The wave of protests over the death of young Nahel spread across French cities throughout the week. There are already more than 3,200 arrested since the murder of the teenager.

The authorities already consider that the demonstrations are cooling down, since the number of arrests has been falling. In the early hours of Sunday to Monday there were 157 arrests, far less than the previous night, when about 700 people had been arrested. On Friday (30), the arrests reached 1300.

Nahel was of Moroccan and Algerian descent, and was buried this Saturday (1) in a mosque in Nanterre. On Sunday, the young man’s grandmother asked for the demonstrations to stop with the crash. “The people who are breaking things, I ask: stop. That they don’t break the windows, that they don’t break the schools, or the buses, ”she said.

The riots are already considered the most serious crisis experienced by President Macron since the “yellow vest” movement. The recent acts are carried out by young people from the so-called “hot neighborhoods” and the average age of the detainees is 17 years old.

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