PARIS (AP) — French fighter jets trailed red-white-and-blue smoke over Paris monuments, families held picnics and firefighters hosted holiday balls around France to celebrate Bastille Day on Friday, a moment of much-needed festivity after mass protests, riots and political divisions that have riven the country this year.
Not everyone was feeling the spirit of “liberty, equality and fraternity” that the holiday aims to embody. Traditional fireworks displays were banned in some towns, and trams and buses halted after dark across France to prevent new unrest in underprivileged neighborhoods. And an exceptional 130,000 police were deployed around the country to maintain order.
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 urban violence 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.
Fighter jets and military helicopters whooshed Friday above the site where 17-year-old Nahel Merzouk was killed last month, on Nelson Mandela Square in the Paris suburb of Nanterre, on their way toward the Arc de Triomphe and the VIP guests watching the grandiose Bastille Day parade. Nanterre’s streets were unusually quiet as local residents gathered to watch the flyby.
Just a few kilometers (miles) away, crowds lined the Champs-Elysees to watch the annual parade, which included 6,500 people marching, 94 planes and helicopters, 219 ground vehicles, 200 horses and 86 dogs this year.