Major cities in France experienced a third consecutive night of rioting as President Emmanuel Macron grappled with growing public anger triggered by the police killing of a 17-year-old teenager of Algerian and Moroccan descent during a routine traffic stop.
National police reported new incidents on Thursday night, with Marseille, Lyon, Pau, Toulouse, and Lille facing fires and protesters launching fireworks. Approximately 40,000 police officers were deployed across the country to contain the unrest following the fatal shooting of 17-year-old Nahel M, who was killed on Tuesday.
In the western suburb of Paris, Nanterre, where the teenager was killed, protests escalated into car burnings, street barricades, and clashes with the police. Demonstrators vandalized buildings and bus shelters, with the words “Vengeance for Nahel” graffitied across them. A bank was set on fire, but firefighters managed to extinguish the flames before they spread to an apartment building. No injuries were reported.
In central Paris, a Nike shoe store was ransacked, and windows were smashed along the Rue de Rivoli shopping street, according to Paris police.
Authorities in Clamart, located 8 kilometers (5 miles) from central Paris, imposed a nighttime curfew until Monday, and Valerie Pecresse, the head of the greater Paris region, announced the suspension of all bus and tram services after 9 pm local time due to incidents on Wednesday night.
Fire also damaged the town hall in L’Ile-Saint-Denis, a Paris suburb near the national stadium and the headquarters of the Paris 2024 Olympics.
In Marseille, the second-largest city in France, police deployed tear gas grenades during clashes with youths at Le Vieux Port, a popular tourist area, as reported by La Provence, the city’s main newspaper. Special police units were dispatched to Lille, Lyon, and Bordeaux. In Grenoble, a bus was targeted with firecrackers, and employees of the local transport company ceased their work.
Clashes between young people and police officers were also reported in Brussels, the capital of Belgium, resulting in the arrest of around 10 individuals. Some public transport operations in Brussels were temporarily halted, and images circulated of a burning car and riot police in gear. Tensions were particularly high in Brussels’ central Anneessens district, according to Belgian news agency Belga.
The unrest in France has revived memories of the riots that engulfed the country for three weeks in 2005, prompting then-President Jacques Chirac to declare a state of emergency. The 2005 riots originated in the Paris suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois and spread nationwide following the electrocution deaths of two young people who were hiding from the police in a power substation.
French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin announced that a total of 667 people were arrested overnight in France, with around 150 arrests made the previous day. While approximately 170 police officers sustained injuries, none were life-threatening. The number of civilian injuries has not yet been released.
Darmanin emphasized the need for a firm response from the state, stating that “the professionals of disorder must go home.” However, he stated that it was not yet necessary to declare a state of emergency, a measure employed to quell the unrest in 2005.
The shooting of Nahel M on Tuesday marked the third fatal shooting by the police during traffic stops in France this year. Reuters reported that the majority of victims in fatal police shootings during traffic stops since 2017 have been individuals of Black or Middle Eastern origin.
The teenager was shot during the morning rush hour when he initially failed to stop after being spotted driving in a bus lane. Two police officers caught up with his car in a traffic jam. As the car attempted to flee, one officer fired a close-range shot through the driver’s window. Nahel was fatally wounded by a single shot through his left arm and chest, according to Nanterre public prosecutor Pascal Prache.
The police officer responsible for the teenager’s death admitted to firing the lethal shot, stating that he aimed towards the driver’s leg but was bumped, causing the shot to hit the chest instead, according to his lawyer Laurent-Franck Lienard. Lienard claimed that his client’s detention was being used to appease rioters, asserting that the officer did not intend to kill the driver but wanted to prevent a car chase and potential harm resulting from alleged traffic violations.
President Macron condemned the shooting as unforgivable and expressed his condemnation of the ongoing unrest. The incident has brought longstanding complaints of police violence and systemic racism within law enforcement agencies to the forefront in France, particularly in the low-income, racially diverse suburbs surrounding major cities.
Karima Khartim, a local councilor in Blanc Mesnil northeast of Paris, noted that people’s patience was wearing thin, saying, “We’ve experienced this injustice many times before.”
