French firefighter DIES while fighting blaze caused by carnage in sixth night of riots

Interior Minister, Gérald Darmanin, confirmed that a 24-year-old Corporal-Chief of the Paris Fire Brigade died in an underground car park in Saint-Denis where several vehicles had been set ablaze.

Protesters are voicing their outrage at the police shooting of a French-Algerian teenager who refused to halt at a traffic stop.

French President Emmanuel Macron was forced to leave last week's summit of EU leaders to deal with the crisis.

Last night, protestors rammed a burning car into the home of a Paris mayor while his wife and children slept inside.

Vincent Jeanbrun, who is mayor of the southern Paris suburb of L'Hay-les-Roses, called the attack an "assassination attempt."

He wrote on Twitter: “Last night, a milestone was reached in horror and ignominy."

“My home was attacked and my family was the victim of an assassination attempt.”

The mayor also described how rockets were thrown as the family attempted to escape the burning house.

His wife, Melanie Nowak, is said to have suffered a broken leg after being struck by a rocket.

Darmanin has opened an investigation into the attack and promised that "the perpetrators will answer for their heinous acts."

On Saturday night, 45,000 police officers were deployed with 719 people arrested.

In a video that surfaced online last week, two police officers can be seen at the window of a bright yellow Mercedes AMG, which officials say had been hired by the victim and was driving erratically.

In the video, later verified by AFP, one of the officers points a gun through the driver’s window and as the car starts moving a gunshot can be heard.

The victim, named as French-Algerian delivery driver, Nahel Merzouk, died of bullet wounds to the chest after being shot in the Paris suburb of Nanterre.

According to the newspaper Le Monde, the police had initially professed that the teenager drove towards the officers with the intention of inflicting harm, though the viral video undermines this account.

Nahel Merzouk's grandmother, Nadia, urged people not to join in the riots.

She told TV channel BFM TV: "I want it to stop everywhere.

“I tell the people who are rioting this: do not smash windows, attack schools or buses.

"Stop! It’s the mums who are taking the bus, it’s the mums who walk outside.”

The latest shooting adds to an unwelcome trend for French police, for a record 13 people lost their lives to police shootings during traffic stops last year.

Yassine Bouzrou, the teenager’s family lawyer, believes the video "clearly showed a policeman killing a young man in cold blood,” and sees no credibility to self-defence claims.

Another lawyer representing the victim's family, Jennifer Cambla, described the death as an "execution".