BERLIN (AP) – Seven people were detained, most of them teenagers, after several shop windows in the Swiss city of Lausanne were smashed as young people gathered in an “echo” of riots in neighboring France, police said Sunday.
More than 100 people gathered in downtown Lausanne, in French-speaking western Switzerland, on Saturday evening, police said in a statement. It said that they were responding to several appeals on social media linked to several nights of violence that have shaken France after the police killing of a 17-year-old in a Paris suburb.
Rioters and looters trying to storm a shop in Lausanne, Switzerland today.
The riots have now spread from France and Belgium to Switzerland too
— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) July 2, 2023
Several shop windows and a shop door were broken, while officers dispersed youths who threw paving stones and a Molotov cocktail at them, police said. They detained six people ages 15 to 17 – three girls and three boys, with Portuguese, Somali, Bosnian, Swiss, Georgian and Serbian citizenship – and a 24-year-old Swiss man.
No police officers were injured.
BREAKING:
The riots and looting in France and Belgium spread tonight to Switzerland too.
Stores were looted in the city of Lausanne and rioters clashed with the riot police.pic.twitter.com/faHOvC5vYz
— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) July 1, 2023
On Thursday, about a dozen people were detained in the Belgian capital, Brussels, and several fires were brought under control.