Hanifa Guermiti cried as she surveyed the charred remains of the public library, which for years had provided books, comics and a quiet homework space for children living in the housing estates of Borny, a neighbourhood in eastern France that is one of the country’s most deprived. “My heart is broken,” she said, remembering the children she had helped with schoolwork there.
With damage estimated at about €12m and more than 110,000 books and documents destroyed, the incineration of the state-of-the-art library in this neighbourhood of the city of Metz was one of the biggest attacks on French state infrastructure in the five nights of rioting that have spread across the country.
