Rioters clash with French police, loot shops in arson on fourth day

Nanterre: Young rioters clashed with police and looted shops on Friday, a fourth day of violence sparked by the fatal police shooting of a teenager in France, mounting further pressure on President Emmanuel Macron as he appealed to parents Appealed to keep children away from the streets and held them socially responsible. Media to create unrest.

Police said 270 people had been arrested across the country till midnight. Despite repeated appeals by the government for peace and stricter policing, Friday also saw violence in broad daylight. An Apple store was looted in the eastern city of Strasbourg, where police fired tear gas, and windows at a fast-food outlet were smashed in a Paris-area shopping mall, where officers tried to force their way into a closed store. The people were dispersed, the officials said.

The southern port city of Marseille, which had initially been spared the violence that flared up in the Paris region, was experiencing a second night of turmoil. Police said that even before nightfall, youths threw shells, set fires and looted shops. He made about 90 arrests. Robbers broke into a Marseille gun shop on Friday evening and made off with weapons, police said, and a man was later arrested with a hunting rifle. Last night, two off-duty officers suffered serious injuries, one of whom was stabbed, when they were attacked by about 20 people, police said.

cre trending stories

Lyon city officials said rioters again set fire to the suburbs and threw stones at police. In the city centre, police made 31 arrests to prevent attempted looting of shops after an unauthorized protest against police violence that was attended by some 1,300 people on Friday evening.

Violence was also breaking out in some areas of France abroad.

A 54-year-old man was shot dead in French Guiana on Thursday night after rioters fired at police in the capital, Cayenne, officials said. Authorities said protesters on the small Indian Ocean island of Reunion set trash bins on fire, threw shells at police and damaged cars and buildings. Around 150 officers were deployed there on Friday night.

Faced with a growing crisis, hundreds of arrests and mass police deployments have failed, Macron held off on declaring a state of emergency, an option that had been exercised in similar circumstances in 2005.

Instead, his government stepped up its law enforcement response. The already massively stretched police forces were to be augmented by another 5,000 officers for Friday night, bringing the overall number to 45,000, the interior minister said. Some were called back from vacations. Minister Gerald Darmanin said police made 917 arrests on Thursday alone and saw their young age – 17 on average. He said more than 300 police officers and firefighters had been injured.

Darmanin also ordered the night-time closure of all public buses and trams across the country, which have been targets of the rioters.

And he said he warned social networks that they cannot allow themselves to be used as a medium for calls for violence.

“They were very cooperative. We’ll see tonight if they really are. We are going to give them as much information as possible” so that, in turn, the French authorities can identify the instigators of the violence, the minister explained.

“We will go after everyone who uses these social networks to commit violent acts,” he said. “And if we find that social networks, whoever they are, do not respect the law, we will take all necessary steps.”

Macron also hit out at social media platforms that have circulated dramatic images of vandalism and cars and buildings being set on fire, saying they were playing a “considerable role” in the violence. Targeting Snapchat and Tiktok, he said that they are being used as mediums to spread unrest and copycat violence.

Macron said his government would work with technology companies to set up procedures to “remove the most sensitive content”, adding that he expected a “sense of responsibility” from them.

Snapchat spokeswoman Rachel Rakussen said the company has increased its moderation since Tuesday to detect and act on riot-related content.

The violence comes just a year before Paris and other French cities are set to host 10,500 Olympians and millions of spectators for the Summer Olympic Games. Paris 2024 organizers said they are closely monitoring the situation and preparations for the Olympics are continuing.

The fatal shooting of the 17-year-old, identified only by her first name Nahel, was captured on video that shocked France and sparked long-running tensions between police and young people in housing projects and disadvantaged neighborhoods Gave.

Macron said a third of those arrested on Thursday night were “young people, sometimes very young” and that it was “the responsibility of parents” to keep their children at home.

Nanterre prosecutor Pascal Prache said officers tried to pull Nahel over because he looked too young and was driving a Mercedes with Polish license plates in the bus lane. He allegedly ran a red light to avoid being stopped and then got stuck in traffic.

The police officer accused of pulling the trigger was initially charged with voluntary manslaughter after Prache said that from his preliminary investigation he concluded that the officer’s use of his weapon was not legally justified. Preliminary allegations mean that investigating magistrates have a strong suspicion of wrongdoing, but they need to do more investigation before sending a case to trial.

According to the prosecutor, the officer said he feared that he and his aide or someone else might be hit by the car when Nahel tried to escape.

Nahel’s mother, identified as Mounia M., told France 5 television that she was angry at the officer but not at the police in general. He said, “He saw a small child who looked like an Arab, he wanted to kill him.” He said that justice should be “very firm”.

He said, “A police officer cannot take his gun and shoot at our children, cannot take the lives of our children.”

Lethal use of firearms is less common in France than in the United States, although last year 13 people were shot by French police for not obeying a traffic stop. This year, three other people, including Nahel, died under similar circumstances. The deaths have prompted calls for greater accountability in France, which has also seen protests for racial justice following the police killing of George Floyd in Minnesota.

Nahel’s burial is scheduled for Saturday, according to Nanterre mayor Patrick Jéry, who said France needed to “push for change” in the deprived areas.

Race was a taboo subject for decades in France, which is officially committed to the principle of colour-blind universalism. In the wake of Nahel’s killing, French anti-racism activists reiterated complaints about police behavior in general.

This week’s protests were reminiscent of three weeks of rioting in 2005 that followed the deaths of 15-year-old Bouna Traore and 17-year-old Zayd Bena while hiding from police at an electricity substation in Clichy-sous-Bois. Had been struck by lightning.