Modi feted by Macron under shadow of riots

PARIS — Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was guest of honor during France's Bastille Day celebrations on Friday, which took place under tight security two weeks after riots swept the country.

During Modi's two-day trip in Paris, India announced a new multibillion-dollar deal for French fighter jets on Thursday. India's Defense Ministry said the country intended to order 26 more Rafale jets as well as another three Scorpene-class submarines, with the price and other terms still being worked out.

India is one of the biggest buyers of French arms. Some of those Indianpiloted Rafales were expected to take part in a flypast on Friday during France's Bastille Day military parade, where Modi was expected to sit alongside French President Emmanuel Macron.

Around 45,000 police were expected to be deployed nationwide in the evening, while firework sales have been banned as the government aims to prevent a repeat of the urban violence seen at the end of June, following the police killing of a teenager.

Bastille Day is celebrated in a more sober affair than in previous years following five nights of rioting from June 27 after the fatal police shooting of a teenager in a Paris suburb.

The most intense urban clashes in nearly two decades saw thousands of cars torched, public property destroyed and more than 3,700 people arrested, many of them minors.

Some towns have canceled their traditional firework displays out of fear of violence, and buses and trams are to stop running in the Paris region from 10 pm.

"Can you believe that in the great democracy of France, we are giving up on our national day because of the fear generated by potential violence or potential riots by some people?" far-right opposition leader Marine Le Pen said on Wednesday.

She called the government measures "an admission of a total loss of confidence in the state".

During Modi's Paris trip, India's space agency launched a rocket on Friday that will attempt to land a spacecraft at the lunar south pole, an unprecedented feat that would advance India's position as a major space power.

Television footage showed the Indian Space Research Organisation's LVM3 launch rocket blast off from the country's main spaceport in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh, leaving behind a plume of smoke and fire.

The Chandrayaan-3 mission is designed to deploy a lander and rover near the moon's south pole around Aug 23.

Only three other space agencies, the United States, the Soviet Union, and China, have touched down a lander on the moon's surface.

Agencies via Xinhua