From 7h ago
Emmanuel Macron says social media is fuelling copycat violence in France and that state agencies would ask platforms such as Snapchat and TikTok to remove the most “sensitive content”.
Speaking after a second government crisis meeting, the president said violence was being organised online. Commenting on the young people involved, he said: “We sometimes have the feeling that some of them are living in the streets of the video games that have intoxicated them.”
Macron also urged parents to keep teenagers at home to quell rioting, saying many of those arrested are young. “It is the parents’ responsibility to keep them at home, and therefore it is important for everyone’s peace of mind that parental responsibility can be fully exercised,” he said.
The tally of arrests in Marseille has increased to 36, according to broadcaster BFMTV who reported that small groups attacked the police with stones. Two officers sustained injuries.
The Society of Editors of Point has “condemned” an attack on a photographer from the Le Point magazine during a demonstration in Nanterre in the early hours of Friday.
“Last night, a photographer working for Le Point, Khanh Renaud, was violently attacked and robbed by a dozen rioters, while he was doing his job covering the events in Nanterre” west of Paris , details the press release sent to AFP.
Police in Paris say an operation is ongoing to evacuate the Place de la Concorde amid the unrest, Reuters reports.
There is a demonstration underway there despite a ban from police with people attending facing the prospect of a fine.
The decree of the prefecture prohibits “undeclared gatherings around in particular the Place de la Concorde, the Champs-?lys?es, the Tuileries, the Champ-de-Mars, the National Assembly, from 7 p.m. today to 5 a.m. tomorrow”.
917 people were arrested on Thursday evening in France, announced interior minister G?rald Darmanin on the TF1 channel.
The average age of those arrested was 17, he said.
Interior minister G?rald Darmanin told the TF1 channel there will be 45,000 law enforcement officers tonight, 5,000 more than yesterday, Le Monde reports.
On the policeman responsible for the shooting placed in pre-trial detention, he stressed that his case was not the subject of “impunity” , while calling for “respecting the time of justice” . “It is not because a police officer is indicted that all the police officers, all the gendarmes are indicted.”
Regarding measures to maintain order, the minister said in “fifty or sixty years, we have used the state of emergency four times, for extremely serious things”.
“It is not because we do not have a state of emergency that we do not have exceptional means”, he argued.
28 people were arrested in Marseille near the city centre, according to broadcaster BFMTV.
Law enforcement are authorised to use drones in several municipalities of Seine-Saint-Denis and Hauts-de-Seine, according to a prefectural decree valid until 6 am on Saturday.
Three nights of rioting were sparked by the fatal police shooting of 17-year-old Nahel M at a traffic stop.
Interior minister Gerald Darmanin wrote to firefighters and police officers seeking to quell unrest.
He said: “The next hours will be decisive and I know I can count on your flawless efforts.”
Darmanin asked local authorities to halt bus and tram traffic from 9 p.m. (1900 GMT) across the whole of France. The government has said all options would be considered to stop the unrest.
Fifteen people were arrested in Cr?teil, in Val-de-Marne, after causing damage and setting fire to bins, a police source told broadcaster BFMTV.
Wanissa watched as smoke rose from the mangled, burnt-out carcasses of 12 buses in the transport depot at Aubervilliers, north of Paris. “All this is a catastrophe,” said the 51-year-old cleaner, who now had to walk 3 miles to her next job from her morning spent mopping the entrance halls of local tower blocks.
The fire was caused by petrol bombs thrown at the depot during the early hours of Friday morning, transport authorities said. The facade of the adjacent Aubervilliers aquatic centre, where training will take place for the 2024 Olympics, was also damaged.
It was just one piece of public infrastructure targeted by arson in a night when fireworks were thrown at police in towns and cities across France, from Roubaix in the north to Marseille in the south, and public buildings were smashed and burned, including 28 schools, 34 town halls and 80 police stations or gendarme buildings in towns from Burgundy to the Loire.
Supermarkets in small towns and shops in some big cities were looted, including Nike in central Paris and an Apple store in Strasbourg.
Olivier Klein, minister delegate for the city and housing, has appealed to parents on Twitter, retiterating president Macron’s earlier message.
“Parents, tonight and until calm returns: keep your children and teenagers at home.”
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