Street unrest eased in France overnight after nearly a week of riots and looting touched off by a police officer’s killing of a teenager that underscored serious tensions in the country’s ethnically mixed suburban neighborhoods.
While the violence has ebbed, the shooting of Nahel, a 17-year-old of North African descent, remains a flashpoint in a crisis over racism and inequality in France that’s drawing comparisons with America’s reaction to the murder of George Floyd in 2020.
The number of arrests dropped to 157 overnight, according to government figures, down from more than 700 the previous night and 1,300 the night before that.
