French police made 994 arrests across the country in the face of riots that broke out for the fourth consecutive day, following the death of a 17-year-old boy, shot dead by police.
French police carried out a record 994 arrests across France from Friday to Saturday night as urban riots entered for the fourth consecutive day, the French Interior Ministry said.
According to the ministry, the protests and urban riots that broke out on Tuesday after the death, shot by the police, of a 17-year-old boy who did not comply with a “stop operation”, were less intense than in the previous days and nights.
A police force of around 45,000 helped quell the violence in this fourth night of riots, but the death toll is high.
According to the Ministry of the Interior, “79 police officers and gendarmes were injured”, around 1,350 vehicles were set on fire, 234 buildings were burned or damaged and around 2,560 fires were recorded on public roads.
Marseille, the second largest city in the south of France, had a restless night, prompting French Interior Minister Gérard Darmanin to send reinforcements to the city.
The police had already registered 88 arrests around 02:00 (01:00 in Lisbon) since the beginning of the night, with groups of young people often masked and “very mobile”.
During a visit to the northwest of Paris, Darmanin reported, in the middle of the night, that the violence was “less intense”, with 471 people already detained throughout the country and sources of tension, specifically in Marseille and Lyon, large cities in the southeast. . .
This Saturday morning, the number of detainees was around a thousand, more than on previous nights, when the police detained some 900 people.
In Lyon and Grenoble (central-eastern France), clashes continued through the night between groups of young people, often hooded, who were running or riding scooters and clashed with the police, who responded with tear gas canisters.
The Paris region was not spared, with three cities near the capital deciding to impose a curfew, as well as other provincial cities.
In Nanterre, a city in the Paris region where Nahel M. was killed by a police officer at the terça-feira during a traffic control, the inhabitants prepare for the funeral of the 17-year-old boy, whose death was triggered by violence and vandalism in all the country.
“Saturday, July 1, will be a day of mourning for the Nahel family,” the family’s lawyers wrote, appealing to the media not to participate in the ceremony, “to give the grieving family the privacy and peace you need.”
Even before the funeral, Darmanin announced that today more “more specialized units” will take to the streets, such as the RAID (special forces unit) and the GIGN (Grupo de Intervención de la Gendarmerie Nacional), elite police officers and gendarmerie troops. .
Light armored vehicles of the ‘gendarmerie’ also took to the streets to try to reduce the tension compared to the previous night, in which 492 buildings were attacked, 2,000 vehicles burned and dozens of shops looted.
Source: Observadora
