PARIS: French authorities on Saturday sent extra troops to flashpoint cities to deal with a fifth night of rioting as the 17-year-old whose killing by a policeman sparked the violent protests was laid to rest.

Police arrested 1,311 people overnight Friday to Saturday, the highest figure since the violent protests began over the point-blank shooting by a policeman of Nahel M. in the western Paris suburb of Nanterre on Tuesday.

Shops were ransacked and town halls attacked in various locations across the country by gangs, often made up of teens organised on social media and armed with fireworks.

The government deployed 45,000 police and several armoured vehicles overnight to tackle the worst crisis of President Emmanuel Macron’s leadership since the “Yellow Vest” protests in late 2018.

Nahel’s shooting by police sparked unrest; over 1,300 people arrested during fifth night of rioting

Nahel’s funeral ceremony was held in the Paris suburb where he lived, with hundreds gathering peacefully along with his mother and grandmother. A ceremony took place in the early afternoon at the mosque in Nanterre with the interment taking place in the giant Mont Valerien cemetery in the area. It finished at 1530 GMT and was marked by “reflection and without incidents”, a witness said.

In a rare intervention on a social issue, the French national football team, many of whose top players are of minority background, joined calls for an end to the clashes.

“The time of violence must give way to that of mourning, dialogue and reconstruction,” the team said in a statement posted on social media by captain and Paris Saint-Germain superstar Kylian Mbappe.

Macron shelves visit to Germany

Mr Macron had left an EU summit in Brussels on Friday early to attend a second cabinet crisis meeting in two days and asked social media to remove “the most sensitive” footage of rioting and to disclose identities of users fomenting violence.

He also had to shelve his official visit to Germany amid violent protests. The German presidency said, “French President Macron spoke today by telephone with German President (Frank-Walter) Steinmeier and informed him of the situation in his country.

Scenes

Social media images showed an explosion rocking the old port area of the southern city, but no casualties were reported. “Rioters in France’s second-largest city had looted a gun store and stole hunting rifles, but no ammunition,” police said.

Videos also showed urban landscapes ablaze. A tram was set alight in the eastern city of Lyon and 12 buses gutted in a depot in Aubervilliers, northern Paris.

Gerald Darmanin, Interior Minister of France met representatives from Meta, Twitter, Snapchat and TikTok. Snapchat said it had zero tolerance for content that promoted violence.

Nahel, a 17-year-old of Algerian and Moroccan descent, was shot by a police officer during a traffic stop on Tuesday in the Paris suburb of Nanterre, where buses were halted and the area quiet on a damp Saturday morning after more overnight rioting.

The policeman whom prosecutors say acknowledged firing a lethal shot at Nahel is in preventive custody under formal investigation for voluntary homicide.

His lawyer said his client had aimed at the driver’s leg but was bumped when the car took off, causing him to shoot towards his chest.

Published in Dawn, July 2nd, 2023