Tens of thousands of police officers have been sent to deal with rioters as France was hit by a fourth night of violence following the fatal shooting of a teenager at a traffic stop in a working-class suburb of Paris.
“The next hours will be decisive and I know I can count on your flawless efforts,” Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin wrote to firefighters and police officers, seeking to quell the unrest that has been breaking out after nightfall.
He asked local authorities to halt bus and tram traffic from 9pm across France and later said 45,000 officers from the police forces would be sent out on Friday evening.
Dozens of people were arrested during the latest disturbances, including 49 in Marseille and 17 in Lyon, police say.
Police started clearing protesters from the central Paris square of Place de la Concorde on Friday evening after an impromptu demonstration.
Looters ransacked shops including an Apple store in Strasbourg, a local official said. A police source said several Casino supermarkets had also been looted.
In the Chatelet Les Halles shopping mall in central Paris, a Nike shoe store was broken into, and several people were arrested after store windows were smashed along the adjacent Rue de Rivoli shopping street, police said.
Meanwhile, rioters looted a gun store in the centre of Marseille, France's second city, and took away some hunting rifles but no ammunition, Marseille police said on Friday.
One person was arrested with a rifle, probably coming from the gun store, police said. The store was now being guarded by police.
French President Emmanuel Macron called on parents to keep teenage rioters off the streets.
Mr Macron also wants the most “sensitive content” removed from social media, saying it is fuelling copycat violence.
“I call on all parents to take responsibility,” he said after an emergency cabinet meeting on Friday to discuss how to quell the violent protests.
"The time of violence must give way to that of mourning, dialogue and reconstruction," the French national football team said in a statement posted on social media by Kylian Mbappe.
The players said they were "marked and shocked by the brutal death of young Nahel", but asked that violence be replaced by "other peaceful and constructive ways of expressing oneself".
The French government stopped short of declaring a state of emergency – a measure taken in 2005 after weeks of rioting throughout France that followed the accidental death of two boys fleeing police.
Yet Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne suggested on Friday that the option is being considered.
Mr Macron's comments came after more than 650 people were arrested across the country in the third night of violence sparked by the killing of the teenager by a policeman during a traffic check on Tuesday.
“This context is the result of organised groups but also of many young people. A third of those arrested last night are young or even very young. I appeal to the responsibility of parents,” Mr Macron said.
He said he wants social media platforms such as Snapchat and TikTok to remove sensitive content and said that violence is being organised online.
Of young rioters, Mr Macron said: “We sometimes have the feeling that some of them are living in the streets the video games that have intoxicated them.”
Requests will also be made, “wherever it is useful, to have the identity of those who exacerbate the violence”, he said.
“Platforms and social networks play a considerable role in events. We have seen the organisation of rallies taking place on the platforms and observed a form of mimicry of violence,” Mr Macron added.
Police initially reported that the officer shot at Nahel, who was of North African descent, at point-blank range because he was driving his car at him.
But a video that emerged on social media shows two policemen standing by the side of the stationary car, with one pointing a weapon at the driver. A voice is heard saying, “you are going to get a bullet in the head”.
The police officer then appears to fire at point-blank range as the car drives off.
The car travels a few dozen metres before crashing. The police officer who shot him was on Thursday placed under formal investigation for voluntary homicide – the equivalent to being charged under British law. He is being held in preventive detention.
Nahel will be buried on Saturday, according to Nanterre Mayor Patrick Jarry, who said the country needs to “push for changes” in disadvantaged neighbourhoods.
Nahel's death, which has revived long-standing grievances about policing and racial profiling in France's low-income and multi-ethnic suburbs, immediately sparked successive nights of violent protests.
“There’s a feeling of injustice in many residents’ minds, whether it’s about school achievement, getting a job, access to culture, housing and other life issues … I believe we are in that moment when we need to face the urgency [of the situation],” Mr Jarry said.
About 40,000 police and gendarmes – along with elite Raid and GIGN units – were deployed in several cities overnight, with curfews in municipalities around Paris and bans on public gatherings in Lille and Tourcoing in the country's north.
Despite the massive security presence, violence and damage were reported in several areas.
On Thursday, the third night of unrest, was marked by pillaging of shops, reportedly including flagship branches of Nike and Zara in Paris, as well as at the Forum des Halles, the largest shopping mall in the centre of the French capital.
Stores were looted and windows smashed along the Rue de Rivoli shopping street, near the Louvre museum, and at the Forum des Halles, where a Nike shoe outlet was broken into.
Several Casino supermarkets were also looted across the country, according to reports.
But the trouble spread far outside the capital, with a police station in the Pyrenees city of Pau hit with a Molotov cocktail, according to regional authorities, and an elementary school and a district office set on fire in Lille.
In the city centre of Marseille, a library was vandalised, according to local officials, and scuffles broke out near by when police used tear gas to disperse a group of 100 to 150 people who allegedly tried to set up barricades.
The unrest extended as far as Belgium’s capital, Brussels, where about a dozen people were detained during scuffles related to the shooting in France and several fires were brought under control.
In Nanterre, the epicentre of the unrest, tensions rose about midnight, with fireworks and explosives set off in the Pablo Picasso district, where Nahel M had lived.
French Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne said earlier on Friday that the emergency cabinet meeting would review “all options” to restore order.
Asked by reporters if a state of emergency was a possibility, as some right-wing opposition parties have demanded, Ms Borne replied: “I won't tell you now, but we are looking at all options, with one priority: restoring order throughout the country.”
On Friday, the transport authority said bus and tram services in the Paris region will stop at 9pm each evening until further notice.
The early shutdown was “for the safety of our workers and passengers”, IDFM said.
'I blame one person'
In her first media interview since the shooting, Nahel's mother, Mounia, told the France 5 channel: “I don't blame the police, I blame one person: the one who took the life of my son.”
She said the 38-year-old officer responsible, who was detained and charged on Thursday, “saw an Arab face, a little kid, and wanted to take his life”. She said justice should be “very firm”.
Nahel’s grandmother, who was not identified by name, told Algerian channel Ennahar TV that her family has roots in Algeria.
Algeria’s foreign affairs ministry said in a statement Thursday that grief is widely shared in the North African country.
The detained police officer’s lawyer, speaking on French TV channel BFMTV, said the officer was sorry and devastated. The officer did what he thought was necessary in the moment, lawyer Laurent-Franck Lienard told the news outlet.
“He doesn’t get up in the morning to kill people,” Mr Lienard said of the officer, whose name has not been released under French practice in criminal cases. “He really didn’t want to kill.”
The Nanterre prosecutor said officers tried to stop Nahel because he looked so young and was driving a Mercedes with Polish licence plates in a bus lane. He allegedly ran a red light to avoid being stopped and then got stuck in traffic.
The officer who fired the shot said he feared he and his colleague or someone else could be hit by the car as Nahel tried to flee, the prosecutor said.
