France riots: Macron to hold crisis meeting as 667 arrested and violence spreads

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Emmanuel Macron is to head another crisis meeting of ministers as the French government struggles to contain an escalation of unrest that has spread from housing estates across the country to the centre of major cities after the police shooting of a teenager earlier this week.

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 centre of Marseille in the south and in and around Lille in the north. There were also disturbances in cities including Rennes and Lyon. Protesters clashed with police in Paris, burning bins and for the first time, there was looting of shops in the centre 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, Compi?gne 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.”

Lienard said the officer had aimed down towards the driver’s leg but was bumped, causing him to shoot towards his chest. “He had to be stopped, but obviously [the officer] didn’t want to kill the driver,” he said, adding that his client’s detention was being used to try to calm rioters.

The 38-year-old officer was on Thursday placed under formal investigation for voluntary homicide, the equivalent in Anglo-Saxon jurisdictions of being charged.

The Nanterre public prosecutor, Pascal Prache, said on Thursday that Nahel died from a single shot through his left arm and chest while driving off after being stopped by police. The officer said he had opened fire because he feared that he and his colleague or someone else could be hit by the car, according to Prache.

“The public prosecutor considers that the legal conditions for using the weapon have not been met,” Prache said.

Nahel was known to police for previously failing to comply with traffic stop orders, Prache said.

Local media reported that 420 people had been arrested as of 3.30am on Friday, citing figures from the interior ministry, after 40,000 police officers were deployed across the country – nearly four times the numbers mobilised on Wednesday.

The interior minister, G?rald Darmanin, who called for “support for our police, gendarmes and firefighters who are doing a brave job”, was pictured by French media at police headquarters in Paris in the early hours of Friday.

In Nanterre, protesters torched cars, barricaded streets and hurled projectiles at police after a peaceful vigil and march led by Nahel’s mother descended into violence.

Protesters scrawled “Vengeance for Nahel” across buildings and as night set in a bank was set on fire before firefighters put it out and an elite police unit deployed an armoured vehicle.

As the night advanced, violent skirmishes between rioters and police also broke out in Lille, Toulouse, Marseille, Lyon, Pau and Montpellier.

In central Paris, Nike and Zara stores were vandalised and looted, Le Monde reported, with 14 arrests made. Further arrests were made after shop windows were smashed along the famous rue de Rivoli shopping street.

In Montreuil, an eastern suburb of the capital, hundreds of youths attacked shops including a pharmacy and a McDonald’s, while bins were set on fire outside the town hall. Police fired teargas in response.

In the western city of Nantes, a car was driven into through the metal barriers of a Lidl store, which was subsequently also looted, Le Parisien reported.

In Vaulx-en-Velin, a suburb of the eastern city of Lyon, youths maintained a “constant and heavy barrage” of fireworks at police, local media reported, while a dozen cars were set alight in Sevran, north-east of Paris.

Videos on social media showed numerous fires across the country, including at a bus depot in a suburb north of Paris and a tram attacked in Lyon.

In the north-eastern city of Lille, the city hall said there was “lots of looting” of shops and supermarkets.

A district hall in the district of Wazemmes and an elementary school in Moulins were set on fire, while in the nearby municipality of Roubaix firefighters dashed from blaze to blaze throughout the night, AFP reported, with buildings set alight including a hotel, a large office building and social centre .

In Marseille, France’s second city, police fired teargas grenades during clashes with youths in the tourist hotspot of the Vieux Port, the city’s main paper La Provence reported.

At least 10 people were also arrested in two Brussels neighbourhoods after rioting that police blamed on the shooting.

Macron had held a morning crisis meeting on Thursday with senior ministers after the second night of unrest and rioting across France. “The last few hours have been marked by scenes of violence against police stations but also schools and town halls, and thus institutions of the republic – and these scenes are wholly unjustifiable,” Macron said.

On Wednesday, the president had also called for calm, saying Nahel’s death was “unexplainable and inexcusable”. His remarks were unusually frank in a country where senior politicians are often reluctant to criticise police, given voters’ security concerns.

Rights groups allege systemic racism within law enforcement agencies, a charge Macron has previously denied. “We have to go beyond saying that things need to calm down,” said Dominique Sopo, head of the campaign group SOS Racisme.

With Reuters and AFP