(CN) — France braced for a weekend of escalating riots on Friday after another night of violence in several cities and towns saw more public buildings, stores, cars and buses attacked by throngs of mostly young French who are angry over the police killing of a 17-year-old in a Paris suburb.
French authorities said 875 people were arrested and 249 police officers were injured during the worst night of mayhem yet seen since protests broke out Wednesday in response to the death of a civilian at a traffic stop in Nanterre, an underprivileged suburb of Paris. The teen, known only as Nahel M., was of Algerian and Moroccan descent.
Police and protesters clashed into the night in Brussels, the Belgian capital, where outrage has also spread. Belgian police said the arrested 64 people, with one youth accused of beating a police officer.
As in France, Belgian cities are home to many Muslim residents with ties to former European colonies in Africa and the Middle East who complain of discrimination, unemployment and lack of opportunity.
French President Emmanuel Macron held a crisis meeting Friday afternoon to assess the damage and ramp up security. After initially seeking to calm tensions — Macron had called the shooting “inexplicable and unforgivable” on Wednesday — the president urged parents to keep children at home on Friday and blamed social media for fueling the riots.
“We’ve seen them — Snapchat, TikTok and several others — serve as places where violent gatherings have been organized, but there’s also a form of mimicry of the violence, which for some young people leads them to lose touch with reality," he told reporters after the crisis meeting.
“You get the impression that, for some of them, they are experiencing on the street the video games that have intoxicated them,” he added.
Schools, police stations, courts, town halls, bus depots and other public buildings have come under assault by protesters and suffered serious damage from fires. Transportation was disrupted in parts of Paris, and crews worked to clear numerous streets of barricades and debris. The interior ministry said 79 police posts were attacked overnight, as were 119 public buildings, including 34 town halls and 28 schools.
The government announced after the crisis meeting that buses and trams across the nation would be halted after 9 p.m. Some cities were going further, with Marseille banning protests.
France's right-wing parties, the Republicans and National Rally, are urging the government to issue an emergency declaration as part of a firmer stance. The government said it would mobilize 45,000 officers for Friday night and that armored vehicles would be used against riots.
Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin has said it is not yet necessary to declare a state of the emergency. One famously occurred in autumn 2005 as then-President Jacques Chirac sought to quell massive riots in France's suburban districts, so-called banlieues, which are home to large populations of French Muslim citizens with roots in former colonies.
Friday saw reports of daytime riots and looting, but the toll from Thursday's riots was already extensive. In addition to the violence reported in many parts of Paris, including looting of a luxury brand shopping area in the center, communities in Marseille, Lyon, Pau, Toulouse and Lille all added to the unrest.
In Paris, rioters broke windows and ransacked stores — including a Nike outlet, a Subway restaurant, a Zara fashion clothing store and a high-end jeweler — on the famous Rue de Rivoli in the heart of the capital. Numerous buses, cars and trams were torched, and clashes between protesters and police were reported in several parts of the city.
The motorcycle officer who shot Nahel remains in custody and issued a statement of apology on Friday. He faces voluntary homicide charges. Laurent-Franck Liénard, an attorney for the officer, said Friday his client acted in compliance with the law and that he had intended to shoot Nahel in the leg but was bumped and struck the youth in the chest.
On Thursday, more than 6,000 people joined a march led by Nahel's mother, Mounia, to demand justice for the killing.
The mayhem is forcing France to scrutinize Macron's decisions in recent years to give police more powers to confront a near-continuous wave of often-violent protests against his unpopular reforms, starting in 2018 with the so-called “yellow vests” protests and followed by protests against pension cuts and demonstrations by hard-core ecologists.
Events in France also are dramatically reawakening racial and religious tensions in Europe at a time of increasing brutality toward migrants seeking refuge in the EU, widespread anti-Muslim sentiment in many European nations and a rise in far-right political parties that have made stopping immigration, especially from Muslim countries, a core tenet of their platforms.
The unrest also comes amid an economic downturn in the EU caused by the coronavirus pandemic and war in Ukraine. Soaring prices, a slowdown in industrial output, budgetary belt-tightening and the beginnings of a recession in Germany, the EU's economic powerhouse, all make for a potentially combustible mix.
Courthouse News reporter Cain Burdeau is based in the European Union.
Follow @cainburdeau
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