ANGER: Paris, Marseille, Lyon, Lille, but also Strasbourg, Tours or Poitiers… Many cities have been affected by damage and sporadic clashes between the police and young people
- Despite the mobilisation of 40,000 police and gendarmes, many neighbourhoods experienced sporadic violence throughout France overnight from Thursday to Friday.
- In total, more than 400 people, mainly minors, were arrested, half of them in the Paris region.
- On BFMTV, the policeman’s lawyer assured that the latter had “asked forgiveness” from Nahel’s family and had “not wanted” to kill him.
The “generalisation” of violence feared by the intelligence services has indeed taken place. Damage to public buildings, looting and sporadic scuffles shook many cities in the Paris region and in the provinces for the third consecutive night on Thursday after the death on Tuesday in Nanterre of Nahel, a 17-year-old minor killed by a police officer who was put in examination and imprisoned for intentional homicide.
To stem this conflagration of working-class neighbourhoods, the authorities had mobilized 40,000 police and gendarmes, as well as elite intervention units such as the Raid (police) and its black armoured vehicles or the National Gendarmerie Intervention Group (GIGN). ), deployed in several cities.
More than 400 arrests, mainly of minors
Despite this massive deployment and nightly curfews, violence and damage were reported Thursday evening in multiple cities. Around 3:00 a.m., at least 421 people were arrested at the national level, according to the entourage of Gérald Darmanin, whose “most” are between 14 and 18 years old. More than half (245) took place in Paris and in the inner suburbs
“There is no very violent confrontation in direct contact with the police, but there are a number of vandalised stores, looted or even burned businesses”, detailed a senior police officer. national.
This was the case in the heart of Paris, at Les Halles and in the rue de Rivoli which leads to the Louvre, but also in the Parisian suburbs, in the urban area of Rouen, in Nantes and in Brest, where the sub-prefect Jean- Philippe Setbon described to AFP “a lot of clashes between police and small very mobile groups”. A tobacconist was notably set on fire, and the storefront of a Lidl forced into the ram car.
The north of France was particularly affected. In Lille, the Raid has been deployed. In Roubaix, the B&B hotel near the train station, in the underprivileged district of Alma, caught fire after midnight, throwing its dozen residents into the street. According to a resident, the flames started from a burned down business. The firefighters also had to intervene on another blaze in a large neighbouring building housing offices.
Municipal library damaged in Marseille
Like the day before, the police were also targeted, trash cans, cars and buses burned, in particular in Villeurbanne (Rhône), noted AFP journalists, or in Aubervilliers (Seine-Saint-Denis ).
Again, public buildings were also targeted by groups often hooded or hidden under hoods, such as the town hall of the priority district of Argon in Orléans. “The police office located at the Laherrère pole in Pau” was for example targeted by a molotov cocktail, according to the prefecture of Pyrénées-Atlantiques.
In the city center of Marseille, it is the storefront of the municipal library of the Alcazar which was damaged which was broken, with smoke bombs launched in the hall. But there was no fire in the building, contrary to false information on social networks.
A short distance away, on the Old Port, scuffles opposed the police to a group of 100 to 150 people who tried to set up barricades.
Firework rockets in Nanterre
In Seine-Saint-Denis, “almost all the municipalities” were affected, often lightning actions, many public buildings targeted such as the town hall of Clichy-sous-Bois and shops looted, according to a police source. “The protection of public buildings has been the priority,” conceded a local source.
Many supermarkets were looted, particularly in Montreuil and Epinay-sur-Seine. In Drancy, rioters used a truck to force the entrance to a shopping center which was partly looted and burned, said a police source. In Pantin, about twenty young people dressed in black, equipped with fireworks fired in the air or in the direction of the police. A fire broke out at the town hall of Clichy-sous-Bois. Thirteen buses from the RATP depot in Aubervilliers were set on fire.
In Nanterre, the Hauts-de-Seine prefecture that has become the epicenter of the violence, fireworks and grenades exploded in the popular district of Pablo Picasso where the killed teenager lived, according to an AFP journalist. The Research and Intervention Brigade (BRI) of the Paris police headquarters deployed for a moment at the entrance to the city and its famous cloud towers, supported in the sky by a helicopter.
