Reuters. French President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday (July 4) welcomed 220 mayors of cities and towns affected by the riots which recently took place in France.
Among them were mayors of major cities such as Marseille, Strasbourg or Bordeaux, as well as L'Hay-les-Roses mayor Vincent Jeanbrun, whose family home was attacked by rioters.
The June 27 shooting of Nahel, a 17-year-old of Algerian-Moroccan descent, unleashed a wave of nationwide rioting that shocked France in its violence before police clamped down on the rioters, resulting in relative quiet over the past two nights.
The killing tapped a deep vein of resentment of law enforcement agencies in the poor and racially mixed suburbs of major French cities - known as 'banlieues' - where Muslim communities of north African descent in particular have long accused police of racial profiling and violent tactics.
What started as an uprising in the banlieues' high-rise estates morphed into a broader outpouring of hate and anger toward the state, and opportunistic violence in towns and cities.
Rioters have torched more than 5,000 cars, looted shopping malls and targeted town halls, schools and state-owned properties considered symbols of the state.
