Jun 30, 2023 at 05:35 Update: 4 minutes ago
It was restless in the night from Thursday to Friday in various French cities. People took to the streets en masse for the third night in a row to protest against the police, who shot dead 17-year-old Nahel on Tuesday.
Cars, police stations and town halls were once again set on fire throughout the country. Shops were also looted.
In the old center of Marseille, rioting youths pelted the police with fireworks. In Lyon, Lille, Sevran, Reims, Roubaix, Nantes, Orléans and the Parisian suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois, demonstrators also sought confrontation with officers and fires were set.
Fear of mass protests led to a gathering alliance in several cities. The situation in Nanterre, the Parisian suburb where Nahel was shot dead on Tuesday morning, was also tense on Thursday evening after a protest march earlier in the day.
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The French Ministry of the Interior reports that 421 people have been arrested across the country, 242 of them in Paris and the surrounding area. Most of those arrested are said to be between fourteen and eighteen years old.
Police deployed 40,000 people across France, a quarter of them in the capital. In the center of Paris, the famous Forum des Halles shopping center was looted. Rioters also targeted several shops on the famous Rue de Rivoli.
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Fear of weeks of protests
Last night was the third night in a row that French people took to the streets en masse to protest the death of Nahel. The question now is how long the protests will last.
France has experienced similar incidents more often in recent decades. In 2005, for example, there were three weeks of unrest following the death of two teenagers in a Parisian suburb.
French President Emmanuel Macron held a crisis meeting on the riots on Thursday. The government wants to prevent the riots from getting out of hand, as in October and November 2005.
The officer who shot 17-year-old Nahel has since apologized to the boy’s family. “He’s devastated, he really doesn’t get up in the morning to kill people,” said the lawyer for the officer, who was arrested on suspicion of manslaughter.
2023-06-30 03:35:00
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