PROTESTERS clashed again with police late on Saturday and early Sunday and targeted a mayor’s home with a burning car as France faced a fifth night of unrest sparked by the police killing of an Algerian descendant teenager.

Police made 719 arrests nationwide by early Sunday after a mass security deployment aimed at quelling France’s worst social upheaval in years.

The 17-year-old, whose death on Tuesday sparked the anger, identified by his first name Nahel, was laid to rest on Saturday in a Muslim ceremony in his home town of Nanterre.

In one incident, a burning car hit the home of the mayor of the Paris suburb of l’Hay-les-Roses overnight.

Several schools, police stations, town halls and stores have been targeted by fires or vandalism in recent days but such a personal attack on a mayor’s home is unusual.

Mayor Vincent Jeanburn said: “While trying to protect the children and escape the attackers, my wife and one of my children were injured.”

French Communist Party general secretary Fabien Roussel said: “All my solidarity with Vincent Jeanbrun, his wife and children. Other mayors have suffered threats, and had to move their families last night.”

In the wake of the countrywide unrest the language used by two French police unions has also come under criticism.

On Friday the two unions, the National Police Alliance and the National Union of Autonomous Trade Unions, said they were engaged in a conflict against “vermin” and “faced with these savage hordes, it’s no longer enough to call for calm, it must be imposed.”

France Unbowed leader Jean-Luc Melenchon hit back at the police, telling them to “shut up” given the “murderous behaviour” that was likely to be sparked by such comments.

On the far right, journalist turned politician, Eric Zemmour described the unrest as “the first throes of a civil war.”

The reaction to the killing was a potent reminder of the persistent poverty, discrimination and limited job prospects in many areas where residents trace their roots to former French colonies.

“Nahel’s story is the lighter that ignited the gas. Hopeless young people were waiting for it. We lack housing and jobs, and when we have [jobs], our wages are too low,” said Samba Seck, from the Paris suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois.

Clichy was the birthplace of weeks of riots in 2005 that shook France, prompted by the death of two teenagers electrocuted in a power substation while fleeing from police.