Protesters targeted municipal buildings, such as town halls and libraries in Marseille.
Paris:
A third consecutive night of violent protests sparked by the killing of a teenager by a policeman has left 249 cops injured. President Emmanuel Macron has cut short a trip to Brussels and will hold a crisis meeting today.
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Police arrested 667 people across France yesterday night as protesters clashed with police in several cities, and torched schools, shops and banks. The majority of those arrested overnight were between 14 and 18 years old.
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Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said that 40,000 officers, including elite Raid and GIGN units, had been deployed to quell the unrest. Despite the massive security deployment, violence and damage were reported in multiple areas.
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Protesters targeted municipal buildings, such as town halls and libraries in Marseille and in the Seine-Saint-Denis department north of Paris.
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Videos on social media showed numerous fires lit across the country, also including a tram set alight in the eastern city of Lyon.
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The coming nights are expected “to be the theatre of urban violence” with “actions targeted at the forces of order and the symbols of the state”, according to a security note accessed by AFP.
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Emmanuel Macron will cut short a trip to Brussels, where he was attending a European Union summit, to chair a crisis meeting on the violence — the second such emergency talks in as many days.
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The protests have been sparked by the killing of 17-year-old Nahel, in Nanterre, a suburb west of Paris. The death has fuelled longstanding complaints of police violence and systemic racism inside law enforcement agencies.
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Video posted on social media showed two police officers leaning into the car, with one of them shooting as the driver pulls away.
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Nahel’s mother, identified only as Mounia, said in an interview with France 5 that she did not blame the police. “I blame one person, the one who took my son’s life,” she said.
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She said the 38-year-old officer responsible, who was detained and charged with voluntary manslaughter on Thursday, “saw an Arab face, a little kid, and wanted to take his life”.
