Violence and looting hit France in a fourth night of protests as massively deployed police made nearly 1,000 arrests and the country braced for more riots ahead of the funeral yesterday of the teenager who was killed by an officer during a traffic stop.
The government said the violence had “lessened” compared with previous nights, but the French Ministry of the Interior still reported 994 arrests nationwide overnight, and 79 injuries among police and gendarmes.
That is more than on any night since protests began on Tuesday, sparked by the death of 17-year-old Nahel by a police bullet.
Photo: AFP
Provisional ministry numbers released early yesterday also included 1,350 vehicles and 234 buildings torched, and 2,560 incidents of fire set in public spaces.
The clashes continued despite France deploying 45,000 officers, the highest number of any night since the start of the protests, backed by light armored vehicles and elite police units.
They were unable to stop looting in the cities of Marseille, Lyon and Grenoble, with bands of often-hooded rioters pillaging shops.
Photo: AFP
Despite rain pouring down on Paris and its suburbs since early yesterday morning, rioting also flared up there, with close to half the nationwide arrests, 406, made in and around the capital, a police source said.
During a visit to Mantes-la-Jolie west of Paris yesterday, French Minister of the Interior Gerald Darmanin said that the night’s violence had been of “much less intensity.”
Darmanin had announced an “exceptional” deployment of police and gendarmes to deal with the riots over the death of Nahel, who was to be buried yesterday in the Paris suburb of Nanterre where he lived and died.
Dozens of police vans were positioned not far from the entrance to the Vieux Pont district of Nanterre, which was the epicenter of the unrest, and nine people had been arrested for carrying Molotov cocktails and gasoline canisters.
The French national soccer team joined calls for an end to the clashes.
“The time of violence must give way to that of mourning, dialogue and reconstruction,” the team said in a statement posted on social media by captain and Paris Saint-Germain superstar Kylian Mbappe.
Les Bleus said they were “shocked by the brutal death of young Nahel,” but asked that violence give way to “other peaceful and constructive ways of expressing oneself.”
The southern port city of Marseille was again the scene of clashes and looting from the center and further north in the long-neglected low-income neighborhoods that French President Emmanuel Macron visited at the start of the week.
Marseille police said the rioters and looters were “very mobile” young people who often wore masks.
A major fire “linked to the riots” broke out in a supermarket, a police source said.
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