Spectre of violence still hangs over France

Could you just go home?”

It was a weary-sounding question, directed by a middle-aged French woman at a gang of youths pushing past her, as a mass of defence shield-wielding riot-police chased after them.

It was the early hours of Sunday morning on the Champs Elysées – the tourist shoppers’ paradise in central Paris. The air was acrid with tear gas. Night number five of the street riots that have engulfed France since the killing of Nahel, a French Algerian teen, by a policeman on a Parisian housing estate.

My colleagues and I were filming the chaos all around when it struck me just how many people in France have posed the same question as the irritated lady.

R&I – TP

Article URL : https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-66083281