STORY: Video from La Presse Libre show two men standing in front of the store, after the brief assault, trying to stop the looting.
Unrest has flared nationwide, and for three nights running, including in cities such as Marseille, Lyon, Toulouse, Strasbourg and Lille as well as Paris where Nahel M., after a 17-year-old of Algerian and Moroccan descent was shot by police on Tuesday in the Nanterre suburb of Paris.
His death, caught on video, has ignited longstanding complaints among poor, racially mixed, urban communities of police violence and racism.
While so far the worst of the violence has been confined to city suburbs, any sign it is spreading into the centres of France’s biggest cities would mark a significant escalation.
The violence has plunged President Emmanuel Macron into the gravest crisis of his leadership since the Yellow Vest protests that started in 2018.
