France celebrated its national holiday Friday with whizzing warplanes and a grand Bastille Day parade in Paris — and with more than 100,000 police deployed around the country to prevent a new outbreak of unrest in underprivileged neighborhoods.
This year, the celebrations marking the start of the French Revolution on July 14, 1789 come in the wake of the nation’s most serious rioting in nearly 20 years, following the fatal police shooting of a teenager with North African roots that laid bare anger over entrenched inequality and racial discrimination.
READ MORE: Unrest spreads to France’s small towns in wake of deadly police shooting of teenager
Fighter jets and military helicopters whooshed Friday right above the site where 17-year-old Nahel Merzouk was killed last month, in the Paris suburb of Nanterre, on their way toward the Arc de Triomphe and the VIP guests watching the parade. The streets were unusually quiet as local residents gathered at Nanterre’s Nelson Mandela Square to watch the flyby.
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