600 held, 200 cops hurt as unrest over teen’s killing rages in France

Nanterre (France), June 30

Protesters erected barricades, lit fires and shot fireworks at cops, who responded with tear gas and water cannons overnight as tensions grew over the deadly police shooting of a 17-year-old.

Marseille bans protests

Marseille, France’s second-largest city, decided to ban public demonstrations for Friday after Thursday night riots in France. Reuters

More than 600 persons were arrested and at least 200 police officers injured as the government struggled to restore order on a third night of unrest. Armoured 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.

On the other side of Paris, protesters lit a fire at the city hall of the suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois and set a bus depot ablaze in Aubervilliers.

keep teens at home, Macron urges parents

French President Emmanuel Macron on Friday urged parents to keep teenagers at home to quell rioting spreading across France. He said social media was fueling copycat violence. After a second crisis meeting with ministers, Macron said social media was playing a “considerable role” in spreading the unrest . He said he wanted social media such as Snapchat and TikTok to remove sensitive content and said violence was being organised online.

In several Paris neighbourhoods, 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, the police sought to disperse violent groups in the city centre, regional authorities said.

Some 40,000 police officers were deployed to quell the protests. The police detained 667 persons, 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.

The 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. AP