2023-06-30 05:31:01
For the third night in a row, there have been riots in France following the death of a youth during a police check in the greater Paris area and other cities. 40,000 police officers were mobilized nationwide on Friday night to curb the violence. Special forces and helicopters were used in a number of cities, the newspaper “Le Parisien” and the broadcaster BFMTV reported. There were at least 420 arrests, including 242 in the Paris area.
“The state’s response must be extremely decisive,” said Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin in the northern city of Mons-en-Baroeul, where several municipal buildings were set on fire. There have been no buses and trams in the Paris region since Thursday evening, and in Clamart, eight kilometers from the center of Paris, there is a night curfew until Monday.
In Nanterre near Paris, where the 17-year-old died on Tuesday, a bank branch was set on fire on Thursday evening, with the flames spreading to a residential building above. The fire brigade extinguished the fire without harming anyone.
Following a funeral march for the shot youth in Nanterre with 6,000 participants, there were already clashes between protesters and the police there on Thursday evening. Molotov cocktails were thrown at the officers, the police monitored the situation with helicopters and called in special forces, and 19 people were arrested. In the port city of Marseille, hundreds of protesters clashed with the police, shops were looted and 14 people arrested.
Special police units were deployed in Lille, Lyon and Bordeaux. In Grenoble, a bus was shot at with firecrackers and the workers of the transport company stopped work.
Meanwhile, there have also been clashes between young people and law enforcement officers in Belgium’s capital, Brussels. According to the Belgian news agency Belga, around 30 people were arrested, most of them minors. Young people had played a cat-and-mouse game with the law enforcement officers and there had been several fires, the police said. As the Brussels transport company announced on Twitter, part of the local public transport was discontinued.
Belgian media showed images of a burning car and police officers in riot gear. According to the police, young people called on social networks on Thursday to gather in response to the 17-year-old’s death in France. According to Belga, there were tensions especially around the centrally located district of Anneessens.
A motorcycle patrol stopped the 17-year-old at the wheel of a car in Nanterre on Tuesday morning. When the young man suddenly drove off, the deadly shot fell from the police officer’s service weapon. A formal investigation into manslaughter was initiated once morest the officer on Thursday, and he was taken into custody. The use of the weapon in the control was not justified, the prosecutor said.
As the detained police officer’s lawyer told the broadcaster BFMTV, the officer regrets the shot at the youth. With his first and last words he apologized to his family. “He’s devastated. He doesn’t get up in the morning to kill people. He didn’t mean to kill.” Meanwhile, the mother of the youth who was shot told France 5: “I’m not angry with the police, I’m angry with one person: the one who took my son’s life.”
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