The French government struggles to contain an escalation of unrest that has spread across the country over the police shooting of a teenager earlier this week.
President Emmanuel Macron is to head another crisis meeting of ministers on Friday, as the unrest has spread from housing estates across the country to the center of major cities.
A total of 667 people were arrested across France into the early hours of Friday morning, officials said, as violence continued into a third night of riots triggered by the deadly police shooting of a 17-year-old of Algerian and Moroccan descent during a traffic stop.
Fireworks and projectiles were thrown at police, bins were set alight and buses and bus depots torched in towns and cities across the country. In some towns, public buildings were targeted. There was unrest in Dijon and several towns in Burgundy, clashes in the center of Marseille in the south and in and around Lille in the north. There were also disturbances in cities including Rennes and Lyon.
📝🇫🇷France: Death of Nahel: new crisis unit at the Élysée after the nocturnal violence. Clashes break out in Lille after 17-year-old killed by police: #France #Macron :Clashes break out in #Lille, northern France, following the death of 17-year-old #Nael, in a #Paris suburb,… pic.twitter.com/QpEWowQx3G
— 🌐World News 24 🌍🌎🌏 (@DailyWorld24) June 30, 2023
Protesters clashed with police in Paris, burning bins and for the first time, there was looting of shops in the center of the capital.
On the Pablo Picasso housing estate in Nanterre – where the 17-year-old boy, Nahel, who was shot by police had grown up – clashes with police continued through the night.
At least three towns around Paris, including Clamart, Compiègne and Neuilly-sur-Marne, imposed full or partial night-time curfews as a police intelligence report leaked to French media predicted “widespread urban violence over the coming nights”.
A lawyer for the officer accused of shooting the 17-year-old known as Nahel M in Nanterre, a suburb west of central Paris, said he had offered an apology to the teen’s family.
“The first words he pronounced were to say sorry and the last words he said were to say sorry to the family,” Laurent-Franck Lienard told BFMTV. “He is devastated, he doesn’t get up in the morning to kill people.”
Source: Agencies
