Shillong, June 30: Unrest spread to major cities in France for a third consecutive night as President Emmanuel Macron grapples with a mounting crisis triggered by the fatal police shooting of a teenager with Algerian and Moroccan heritage during a traffic stop.
Despite the deployment of forty thousand police officers across the country, nearly four times the number mobilized the previous day, the government’s calls to de-escalate the violence appeared to have little effect on the widespread anger.
In Nanterre, a working-class town on the outskirts of Paris where 17-year-old Nahel M was killed on Tuesday, protesters set cars on fire, erected barricades, and threw projectiles at the police following a peaceful vigil. Buildings were defaced with the words “Vengeance for Nahel,” and during the night, a bank was set ablaze before being extinguished by firefighters, while an armored police vehicle was deployed.
In central Paris, a Nike shoe store was looted, and Paris police reported the arrest of 14 individuals for vandalism and 16 others for theft after store windows were smashed along the Rue de Rivoli shopping street.