NANTERRE, FRANCE (AP) – Protesters erected barricades, lit fires and shot fireworks at police who responded with tear gas and water cannons in French streets overnight as tensions grew over the deadly police shooting of a 17-year-old that has shocked the nation.
More than 600 people were arrested and at least 200 police officers injured as the government struggled to restore order on a third night of unrest.
Armoured police vehicles rammed through the charred remains of cars that had been flipped and set ablaze in the Paris suburb of Nanterre, where a police officer shot the teen identified only by his first name, Nahel.
On the other side of Paris, protesters lit a fire at the city hall of the suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois and set a bus depot ablaze in Aubervilliers. In several Paris neighbourhoods, people hurled firecrackers at security forces.
The police station in the city’s 12th district was attacked, while some shops were looted along Rivoli street, near the Louvre museum, and at the Forum des Halles, the largest shopping mall in central Paris.
In the Mediterranean port city of Marseille, police sought to disperse violent groups in the city centre, regional authorities said.
Some 40,000 police officers were deployed to quell the protests. Police detained 667 people, the interior minister said; 307 of those were in the Paris region alone, according to the Paris police headquarters. Around 200 police officers were injured, according to a national police spokesperson.
Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin yesterday denounced what he called a night of “rare violence”. His office described the arrests as a sharp increase on previous operations as part of efforts to be “extremely firm” with rioters.
The government has stopped short of declaring a state of emergency – a measure taken to quell weeks of rioting around France that followed the accidental death of two boys fleeing police in 2005.
President Emmanuel Macron left early from a European Union summit in Brussels, where France plays a major role in European policymaking, to return to Paris and had an emergency security meeting yesterday.
The police officer accused of pulling the trigger on Tuesday was handed a preliminary charge of voluntary homicide after prosecutor Pascal Prache said his initial investigation led him to conclude “the conditions for the legal use of the weapon were not met”.
The detained police officer’s lawyer, speaking on French TV channel BFMTV, said the officer was sorry and “devastated”.
The shooting captured on video shocked France and stirred up long-simmering tensions between police and young people in housing projects and other disadvantaged neighbourhoods.
