Protesters erected barricades, lit fires and shot fireworks at police who responded with tear gas and water cannons in French streets overnight as tensions grew over the deadly police shooting of a 17-year-old that has shocked the nation. More than 600 people were arrested and at least 200 police officers injured as the government struggled to restore order on a third night of unrest.
Armored police vehicles rammed through the charred remains of cars that had been flipped and set ablaze in the northwestern Paris suburb of Nanterre, where a police officer shot the teen identified only by his first name, Nahel. A relative of the teen said his family is of Algerian descent.
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 several Paris neighborhoods, groups of people hurled firecrackers at security forces. The police station in the city's 12th district was attacked, while some shops were looted along Rivoli street, near the Louvre museum, and at the Forum des Halles, the largest shopping mall in central Paris.
In the Mediterranean port city of Marseille, police sought to disperse violent groups in the city center, regional authorities said.
Similar incidents broke out in dozens of towns and cities across France.
France to deploy 40K officers to quell violence after police shooting
The killing of a 17-year-old during a traffic stop has reignited tensions between young people and police in disadvantaged neighborhoods.
Some 40,000 police officers were deployed to quell the protests. Police detained 667 people, the interior minister said; 307 of those were in the Paris region alone, according to the Paris police headquarters.
Around 200 police officers were injured, according to a national police spokesperson. No information was available about injuries among the rest of the population.
Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin on Friday denounced what he called a night of "rare violence." His office described the arrests as a sharp increase on previous operations as part of an overall government efforts to be "extremely firm" with rioters.
The French government has stopped short of declaring a state of emergency — a measure taken to quell weeks of rioting around France that followed the accidental death of two boys fleeing police in 2005. Yet Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne suggested Friday the option is being considered.
President Emmanuel Macron left early from an EU summit in Brussels, where France plays a major role in European policymaking, to return to Paris and hold an emergency security meeting Friday.
The German government on Friday said it's monitoring the unrest in France "with some concern" but that it was up to French authorities and the public there to tackle the issue.
The police officer accused of pulling the trigger Tuesday was handed a preliminary charge of voluntary homicide after prosecutor Pascal Prache said his initial investigation led him to conclude "the conditions for the legal use of the weapon were not met." Preliminary charges mean investigating magistrates strongly suspect wrongdoing but need to investigate more before sending a case to trial.
AP
The shooting, captured on video, shocked France and stirred up long-simmering tensions between police and young people in housing projects and other disadvantaged neighborhoods.
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, attorney Laurent-Franck Lienard told the news outlet.
"He doesn't get up in the morning to kill people," Lienard said of the officer, whose name has not been released as per French practice in criminal cases. "He really didn't want to kill."
Prache, the Nanterre prosecutor, said officers tried to stop Nahel because he looked so young and was driving a Mercedes with Polish license plates in a bus lane. He allegedly ran a red light to avoid being stopped 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 attempted to flee, according to Prache.
Nahel's mother, identified as Mounia M., told France 5 television that she's angry at the officer who killed her only child, but not at the police in general. "He saw a little, Arab-looking kid, he wanted to take his life," she said, adding that justice should be "very firm."
"A police officer cannot take his gun and fire at our children, take our children's lives," she said.
Deadly use of firearms is less common in France than in the United States, although 13 people who didn't comply with traffic stops were fatally shot by French police last year. This year, another three people, including Nahel, have died under similar circumstances. The deaths have prompted demands for more accountability in France, which also saw protests against racial injustice after George Floyd's killing by police in Minnesota.
