Nine people, including two minors, have been arrested after a group of about 50 people attacked a police station near the Paris 2024 Olympic village with heavy-duty rocket fireworks, the French capital’s top police official has said.
The attack on Sunday evening in La Courneuve followed the death last Wednesday of a teenager after a police chase. Authorities announced a reinforced police presence across the northern Paris suburb.
“Police have a strong presence there today and that will be even more the case during the Olympics, when we will have a massive presence everywhere in the Paris region, and I have no fear on that level,” the Paris police chief, Laurent Nuñez, said on Monday.
Nunez said about 50 people “attacked the police station in La Courneuve, mostly with fireworks shot from launchers”, adding that the attackers also threw stones and molotov cocktails in a standoff that lasted about 30 minutes.
Police returned fire with sting-ball grenades and flash-ball projectiles, which are routinely used by French riot police as an alternative to firearms. Nunéz said the attack “can be linked” to the death last week of the 18-year-old, identified as Wanys R.
La Courneuve, a few kilometres from the Olympic village in the suburbs of Seine-Saint-Denis, a largely low-income department north of the capital that the government hopes will gain from Games-related infrastructure investment.
The police chief said many of the attacking group came from the same neighbourhood as Wanys, who was killed in the nearby town of Aubervilliers after refusing to stop when police ordered him to do so. His scooter was struck by a police car, killing him and injuring his passenger
In French cities including Paris, Marseille, Bordeaux and Toulouse there were six consecutive nights of rioting and violence last summer after the police shooting of Nahel Merzouk, 17, who was of north African descent, during a traffic stop.
More than 3,700 people, including at least 1,160 minors, were arrested, 5,000 cars were burned, 11,000 fires lit, 2,000 shops looted and hundreds of public buildings trashed, including bus depots, schools and community centres.
The police officer who fired the fatal shot has been charged with voluntary homicide.
Lawyers for Wanys R’s family have said the collision was deliberate but police representatives say it was an accident.
Nunéz said two officers were slightly injured in Sunday night’s clashes and dozens of extra police were being drafted in to ensure calm. “The reinforcements will stay there for as long as necessary,” he said.
