French police made a record 994 arrests across France from Friday evening to today after urban riots began for the fourth consecutive day, the French Interior Ministry reported.
According to the ministry, the protests and urban riots that broke out on Tuesday following the police gunshot death of a 17-year-old youth who failed to comply with a “stop operation” were less intense than in previous years. days and nights.
A police force of about 45,000 helped quell the violence on this fourth night of rioting, but the toll is heavy.
According to the Interior Ministry, “79 policemen and gendarmes were injured”, about 1,350 vehicles were set on fire, 234 buildings were burned or damaged, and about 2,560 fires were recorded on public roads.
Marseille, the second largest city in the south of France, had a restless night, prompting French Interior Minister Gérard Darmanin to send reinforcements to the city.
Police had already recorded 88 arrests since the start of the night at around 2 a.m. (1 a.m. in Lisbon), with groups of youths often masked and “very mobile”.
During a visit to northwestern Paris in the middle of the night, Darmanin reported that the violence was “less intense”, with 471 arrests already made across the country and hotbeds of tension, particularly in Marseille and Lyon, major cities in the south-east.
The number of people arrested this morning was around a thousand, more than the previous nights, when the police arrested about 900 people.
In Lyon and Grenoble (central-eastern France), clashes continued into the night between groups of young people, often hooded, who ran or rode scooters and confronted the police, who responded with tear gas grenades.
The Paris region was not spared, with three cities close to the capital deciding to impose curfews, as well as other cities in the province.
In Nanterre, the city in the Paris region where Nahel M. was killed by a police officer during a traffic check on Tuesday, residents are preparing today for the funeral of the 17-year-old, whose death sparked violence and vandalism everywhere. country.
“Saturday, July 1, will be a day of mourning for Nahel’s family,” the family’s lawyers wrote, appealing to the media not to participate in the ceremony, “to allow the bereaved family the privacy and respect they they need”.
Even before the funeral, Darmanin announced that today more “more specialized units” will take to the streets, such as the RAID (special forces unit) and the GIGN (Group of Intervention of the National Gendarmerie), elite police and gendarmerie troops. ‘.
Lightly armored ‘gendarmerie’ vehicles were also sent into the streets to try to ease tension on the previous night, which saw 492 buildings attacked, 2,000 vehicles set on fire and dozens of shops looted.
Source: DN
