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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
World
Mark Townsend in Marseille

‘We are seen as less human’: inside Marseille’s districts abandoned by the police

Protesters clash with riot police in Marseille on Friday after the shooting of a teenager in a Paris suburb on Tuesday.
Protesters clash with riot police in Marseille on Friday after the shooting of a teenager in a Paris suburb on Tuesday. Photograph: Christophe Simon/AFP/Getty Images

Inside, Emmanuel Macron was sharing a typically polished vision of a rejuvenated, safer Marseille. Yet it was outside the spruced-up gym in the impoverished Busserine district - tensions building on the hottest day of the year – where the real story was playing out.

Little more than 12 hours before the police killing of a 17-year-old boy 500 miles north in Nanterre would convulse the country, scores of officers clutching assault rifles and bulletproof riot shields clashed with teenagers of north African descent, trading insults as officers profiled potential troublemakers.

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