Police arrest 1300 in French riots ahead of teen’s funeral
French police arrested more than 1,300 people during a fourth night of rioting ahead of the funeral of teenager Nahel M, whose shooting by police sparked the unrest that on Saturday prompted President Emmanuel Macron to postpone a trip to Germany.
Macron’s government deployed 45,000 police officers as well as armoured vehicles overnight to tackle the worst crisis to face his leadership since the “Yellow Vest” protests which brought much of France to a standstill in late 2018, Reuters reported.
On Saturday afternoon, family and friends gathered for the service at a mosque in Nanterre, the Paris suburb where the 17-year-old was killed. The funeral was solemn and quiet, according to CNN’s team on the ground, with people waiting in silence for his coffin to leave the mosque.
The boy’s mother, Mounia, told television station France 5 on Friday that she blamed only the officer who shot her son, Nahel Merzouk, for his death. Nonetheless, the killing has sparked widespread destructive unrest and questions over whether race was a factor in his death.
Protests continued into the early hours of Saturday in defiance of a ban announced a day earlier on all “large-scale events” in the country, with rioting breaking out in several cities, CNN affiliate BFMTV reported.
France’s Interior Ministry said on Twitter that 1,311 people had been arrested overnight, compared with 875 the previous night, although it added the violence was “lower in intensity”.
The ministry said Saturday that 2,560 fires had been reported on public roads, with 1,350 cars burned, and that there had been 234 incidents of damage or fire in buildings.
More than 200 police officers have been injured, Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said, adding that the average age of those arrested was 17.
Friday night’s arrests included 80 people in Marseille, home to many people of North African descent.
Macron postpones German visit
Macron postponed a state visit to Germany that was to begin today. It was the second time this year that unrest in France has forced Macron to postpone high profile encounters with a head of state after Britain’s King Charles cancelled a visit due to protests over pension legislation, Reuters reported.
Macron spoke on the phone on Saturday with German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and briefed him on the situation, a spokesperson for the German president said.
Yann Wernert, of the Jacques Delors Institute think tank in Berlin, said the postponed visit highlighted the unrest’s impact on Macron’s ability to conduct foreign policy.
Shops ransacked
Looters have ransacked dozens of shops and torched 2,000 vehicles since the start of the riots, which have spread to cities such as Marseille, Lyon, Toulouse, Strasbourg and Lille.
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.
Mayor Benoit Payan called on the government to send extra troops to tackle “pillaging and violence” in Marseille, where three police officers were slightly wounded on Saturday.
In Lyon, France’s third-largest city, police deployed armoured personnel carriers and a helicopter, while in Paris, they cleared protesters from the Place de la Concorde. Lyon Mayor Gregory Doucet has also called for reinforcements.