A group of teenage migrants burned down a passenger bus in Saint-Denis, Paris.
The group carried out the attack on the night of July 27. Wearing masks, the men forced the bus to stop by blocking a roadway. After evacuating the driver and five passengers, the men smashed the bus’s windows and threw a Molotov cocktail inside. The bus exploded and burned to the ground.
The men shouted “Allahu Akbar” repeatedly during the attack.
It took firefighters three water cannons before the fire was finally stopped, leaving only the charred remains of the bus’s metal frame.
“Here’s what the bus looks like,” a woman narrated over video of the scene. “They really scorched it.”
The mayor of the district, Didier Paillard, denounced the attack as an “act of vandalism.” Paillard has previously been criticized for taking a too lax position on Muslim immigration and the possibility of radicalization. In 2006, he organized a citizen referendum giving foreign residents the right to vote.
Saint-Denis has the highest proportion of immigrants of any French department. Its reputation for extremists has earned it the title “Molenbeek-sur-Seine”—referencing the Brussels municipality that has become a safe haven for jihadists.
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