France protests spread to Switzerland

Days of unrest and rioting in France have spread overnight to neighbouring Switzerland, after spilling over into Belgium earlier in the week.

In the Swiss city of Lausanne, there were clashes between police and groups of protesters, most of them young – an echo of the profile of many of the rioters in France. Seven people were detained, most of them teenagers, after several shop windows in Lausanne were smashed. Around 100 people gathered on Saturday night in the centre of the city, which is located in the mainly French-speaking western part of Switzerland. Young people threw paving stones and at least one Molotov cocktail at officers, police said in a statement. The violence began “following several calls on social media”, police said, and “several shop windows were smashed”.

Pierre-Antoine Hildbrand, the Lausanne councillor holding the security brief, told Swiss public broadcaster RTS that “Nothing justifies these organised attempts to loot shops”. Swiss police detained six people aged between 15 and 17 — three girls and three boys, who had Portuguese, Somali, Bosnian, Swiss, Georgian and Serbian citizenship.