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There are renewed concerns over levels of violence among young French people after the death of a 15-year-old pupil who was badly beaten near his school.
The boy was attacked by several people as he left school on Thursday afternoon in Viry-Chatillon, about 20km (12 miles) south of Paris.
He suffered a cardiac arrest and died a day later, a police source said.
“This extreme violence is becoming commonplace,” said the town mayor, Jean-Marie Vilain.
Earlier in the day, French President Emmanuel Macron said schools needed to be “shielded” from “uninhibited violence among our teenagers and sometimes among increasingly younger ones”.
Mr Vilain told French media the boy was walking home after a music class at about 16:30 local time on Thursday when he was set upon by a group of youths.
According to witnesses, he was punched and kicked by the attackers, who were wearing balaclavas.
He was taken to the Necker hospital, a top paediatric hospital in Paris, but doctors were unable to save his life.
Police are still looking for his assailants and are studying CCTV footage in an effort to identify them.
Mr Vilain said he was saddened by the assault, which he described as “senseless” and “unspeakable”.
It was the second such incident in a week in France, after a 13-year-old girl was attacked outside her school in Montpellier on Tuesday.
Tensions in French schools are high since the killing of two teachers.
Samuel Paty was decapitated on the street in a Paris suburb in 2020 and Dominique Bernard was killed at his school in Arras in October last year. Former students who had been radicalised were involved in both killings.
Last week, the headteacher of a Paris school resigned because of death threats. He was falsely accused of striking a student in a row over her wearing an Islamic headscarf in school.
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