Summary
In case you’ve missed anything, here’s a quick rundown of all the latest developments from the riots in France.
Nahel Merzouk, the 17-year-old whose shooting by police sparked the riots, has been buried after a private funeral attended by dozens of his friends and family. A large crowd also gathered outside the mosque where the ceremony was held.
President Macron has postponed a state visit to Germany amid the unrest. He had been scheduled to arrive on Sunday for talks with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and to attend a state banquet before travelling home on Tuesday.
An additional 45,000 officers have been deployed to Paris, Marseille, Lyon, and elsewhere ahead of what is expected to be a fifth night of unrest.
Photos have shown shops along the Champs-Elysées, the wide shopping avenue in central Paris, boarding up their windows in preparation for further rioting.
Police have already announced the arrest of 37 people in Paris and 22 people in Marseille on Saturday evening.
Earlier in the day, the justice minister, Eric Dupont-Moretti, said that almost a third of the 1,311 people arrested overnight on Friday were under the age of 18.
The mayor of the Parisian suburb of Nanterre, where Nahel was shot, has said the death marks a “very difficult moment” that was “forcing us to reflect on the police’s terms of engagement”.
French luxury fashion house Celine has cancelled its menswear show on Sunday amid the unrest. Creative director Hedi Slimane said the “uncertain evolution” of the situation made the move necessary for the security of his team and guests.
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What has caused the unrest in France?
The protests in France began on Tuesday after the fatal shooting by police of Nahel Merzouk, a French 17-year-old of Algerian descent, in the Paris suburb of Nanterre.
Merzouk was shot in the chest at close range as he tried to drive away from two police officers after being pulled over.
According to reports, he had been pursued after driving at high speed in a bus lane and stopped only when he was blocked by stationary traffic.
Police initially said one of the officers opened fire because the way Merzouk was driving made him fear for his own safety and that of others, but that account was later questioned after video of the shooting surfaced online.
The officer has now been charged with voluntary homicide, and the incident has led to accusations of racism in the French police.
The protests in Paris evolved into rioting on Tuesday night and spread across the country throughout the week.
At least 2,100 people have so far been arrested and more than 200 police officers have been reported injured.
French police arrested more than 200 people during the day on Saturday in connection with rioting over the preceding nights, according to French outlet BFMTV.
The arrests were predominantly in connection with attacks on police officers and acts of arson involving public buildings overnight on Thursday, the channel said, citing police sources.
Police had earlier announced the arrest of almost 2,200 people on Thursday and Friday nights.
Pictures show riot police patrolling on the streets of Paris as night sets in.
Some 7,000 extra officers have been deployed to the French capital and surrounding areas ahead of more expected unrest tonight.
Inside, Emmanuel Macron was sharing a typically polished vision of a rejuvenated, safer Marseille. Yet it was outside the spruced-up gym in the impoverished Busserine district - tensions building on the hottest day of the year – where the real story was playing out.
Little more than 12 hours before the police killing of a 17-year-old boy 500 miles north in Nanterre would convulse the country, scores of officers clutching assault rifles and bulletproof riot shields clashed with teenagers of north African descent, trading insults as officers profiled potential troublemakers.
Wassida Kessaci had decided not to join the crowd monitoring the French president’s trip to Marseille last week. Partly because Macron disappointed her; partly because she had been visiting Busserine too often of late.
Most recently on 24 April, when she met a mother whose teenage son was shot in the head as he sat on a sofa, metres from where the French president now held court. Weeks earlier, she comforted another mother of a young man whose blackened body was found in the locked boot of a torched car. “All this in the same place where Macron was speaking,” she said.
Read the full story here:
Police arrest 22 people in Marseille - reports
A total of 22 people have been arrested in the city of Marseille so far this evening, according to French outlet BFMTV.
The channel said five people were arrested after tear gas was used to disperse demonstrators on La Canebière, a major shopping avenue in the centre of the city.
It comes after police announced 14 people had been arrested amid looting on the same street.
Marseille has seen significant rioting in recent nights and is one of the cities to which some of the 45,000 additional officers deployed across France tonight have been sent.
We’ve got some pictures coming in of unrest this evening in Marseille, one of the cities to which additional officers have been deployed in preparation for tonight.
At about 3am last Friday, I was woken up by what sounded like gunfire. I wasn’t far wrong.
From the back windows of my apartment in southern Paris I could make out fireworks being hurled at the police and hear the immediate response with “flash-balls”, the “less than lethal” weapons used by French police for riot control.
I had spent the evening following the news coverage of the violent riots that were breaking out spontaneously all over France.
There were familiar images of cars and buildings on fire and heavily armed police lines – familiar at least to anyone who has lived through the past few years of angry protest in France.
But what was most disturbing about these riots was the sheer scale of it all: the violence was not just contained to the banlieues of the big cities but was everywhere, including picturesque towns such as Montargis in the Loiret.”
Read the full report here:
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As well as cities across France, the demonstrations have spread to a number of French overseas territories.
Pictures show unrest last night in the town of Le Port on the island of Réunion in the Indian Ocean.
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Additional 45,000 police to be deployed tonight
An additional 45,000 police officers will be deployed in cities across France tonight, the country’s interior minister has confirmed.
At a press conference on Saturday, Gérald Darmanin said reinforcements would be sent in particular to Lyon and Marseille, which have seen some of the worst of the rioting.
It matches the number of extra officers sent out overnight on Friday, an operation which saw 1,311 people arrested, the highest figure since the start of the unrest.
More than 200 officers have been injured since the demonstrations broke out, according to French officials.
French luxury fashion house Celine has cancelled its menswear show in Paris this weekend amid the ongoing unrest, its creative director, Hedi Slimane, has said.
In a post to Instagram on Saturday, Slimane wrote: “A fashion show in Paris, while France and its capital are bereaved and bruised, seems … inconsiderate and totally misplaced.”
He added that it was a “great disappointment” to cancel the show, which had been scheduled for Sunday, but that the “uncertain evolution of the very serious troubles” made the move necessary for the security of his team and guests.
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'We must reflect on the police's terms of engagement', says local mayor
The mayor of Nanterre, the Paris suburb where Nahel Merzouk was killed, has said the death means authorities must “reflect on the police’s terms of engagement”.
Speaking to French newspaper Le Monde, Patrick Jarry said the work of the local police is usually “carried out in compliance with the rules” but that “today, we are confronted with a particularly dramatic episode”.
“[It is] a very difficult moment, forcing us to reflect on the police’s terms of engagement,” he said.
“This is particularly the case for specific police forces, such as those who intervened on Tuesday morning by using their weapon against a teenager, violating all legal provisions.”
Asked about the reaction of locals to the incident, he said: “Today, the demand for justice is paramount. The thousands of people who have expressed their anger would like to be sure that justice will be accomplished fairly.
“We must continue to support [Nahel’s] mother. Here, at the town hall, we’ll always be by her side and we’ll support her in all her endeavours, particularly with the courts.”
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The 17-year-old shot dead by a French police officer on Tuesday has been buried after a private funeral in Nanterre.
Dozens of Nahel Merzouk’s friends and family members attended a ceremony at the Ibn Badis mosque in the town west of Paris before the coffin was taken to the Mont-Valérien cemetery to cries of “Justice for Nahel”.
A large crowd had gathered outside the mosque, and the funeral procession was escorted by mourners and supporters including many young people on scooters.
A 38-year-old police sergeant has been officially placed under investigation for voluntary homicide.
The French president, Emmanuel Macron, cancelled a planned two-day visit to Germany on Sunday.
Read more: Crowds gather for funeral of teen shot dead by French police
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A number of shops and boutiques on the Champs-Elysées, in Paris, have taken additional security measures following the fourth night of violence triggered by the fatal shooting of teenager Nahel Merzouk.
Workers were pictured putting up additional screens at luxury brand stores such as Rolex, amid fears of further protests on Saturday evening following Nahel’s funeral.
Finance minister Bruno Le Maire said more than 700 shops, supermarkets, restaurants and bank branches had been “ransacked, looted and sometimes even burned to the ground since Tuesday”.
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On Friday, the French president criticised the role of social media as violence continued to erupt across the country.
Macron, who left an EU summit in Brussels early to attend a crisis cabinet meeting, appealed to “the responsibility of mothers and fathers” and said it was not the job of ministers to take their place.
He also said social media was playing a considerable role in the violence that has led to thousands of arrests.
Watch his comments below:
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Almost a third of people arrested under 18, says justice minister
The justice minister, Eric Dupont-Moretti, has said that 30% of the 1,311 people arrested overnight are people are under the age of 18.
In other developments, rioters have torched 2,000 vehicles since the start of the unrest, and more than 200 police officers have been injured, according to the interior minister, Gerald Darmanin.
In addition, more than 700 shops, supermarkets, restaurants and bank branches have been “ransacked, looted and sometimes even burned to the ground since Tuesday”, said finance minister Bruno Le Maire.
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Several hundred mourners lined up to enter Nanterre’s grand mosque for the funeral of Nahel Merzouk this afternoon.
The entrance to the Ibn Badis Mosque was guarded by volunteers in yellow vests, while a few dozen bystanders watched from across the street as the funeral ceremony took place, Reuters reports.
Some of the mourners, their arms crossed, said “God is Greatest” in Arabic, as they spanned the boulevard in prayer.
A group of mourners were pictured at the Mont-Valérien cemetery, where Nahel is being laid to rest.
Rokhaya Diallo is a writer, activist and director, and they write for us to argue that France has ignored racist police violence for decades.
Since the video went viral of the brutal killing by a police officer of Nahel, a 17-year-old shot dead at point-blank range, the streets and housing estates of many poorer French neighbourhoods have been in a state of open revolt. “France faces George Floyd moment,” I read in the international media, as if we were suddenly waking up to the issue of racist police violence.
This naive comparison itself reflects a denial of the systemic racist violence that for decades has been inherent to French policing.
I first became involved in antiracist campaigning after a 2005 event that had many parallels with the killing of Nahel.
Three teenagers aged between 15 and 17 were heading home one afternoon after playing football with friends when they were suddenly pursued by police.
Although they had done nothing wrong (and this was confirmed by a subsequent inquiry) these terrified youngsters, these children, hid from the police in an electricity substation. Two of them, Zyed Benna and Bouna Traoré, were electrocuted. The third, Muhittin Altun, suffered appalling burns and life-changing injuries.
Read more: France has ignored racist police violence for decades. This uprising is the price of that denial
Lyon’s mayor, Grégory Doucet, has called for further police reinforcements to be sent to the city to help prevent another outburst of violence.
In the country’s third-largest city, police have already deployed armoured personnel carriers and a helicopter.
The French media is reporting that the country’s interior ministry will also send a police unit called CRS 8 to the city. The group specialises in anti-riot and crowd control measures.
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The Reuters news agency has been speaking to people at the funeral of Nahel, the teenager whose death sparked the riots.
Salsabil, a young woman of Arab descent, told Reuters that she had come to express support for Nahel’s family.
“I think it’s important we all stand together,” she said.
Marie, 60, said she had lived in Nanterre for 50 years and there had always been problems with the police.
“This absolutely needs to stop. The government is completely disconnected from our reality,” she said.
The shooting of the teenager, caught on video, has reignited longstanding complaints by poor and racially mixed urban communities of police violence and racism.
“If you have the wrong skin colour, the police are much more dangerous to you,” said a young man, who declined to be named, adding that he was a friend of Nahel’s.
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Macron postpones Germany trip as unrest continues
The French president, Emmanuel Macron, has postponed a state visit to Germany because of the ongoing unrest in France, German authorities have said.
Macron was expected to arrive in the country on Sunday for talks with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz to discuss key policy areas.
The French president was intending to visit a state banquet on Monday hosted by German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier at the Bellevue Palace in Berlin, before returning home on Tuesday.
A spokesperson for the president said Macron had requested the date be moved due to the situation in France.
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An academic has called for a discussion of the structural causes of the violence that has erupted in France after the police killing of a 17-year-old boy.
Ariane Basthard-Bogain, a lecturer in French and politics at Northumbria University in England, told France 24:
What we’ve seen over the past few days is a lot of discourse about law and order, about restoring order, about how awful this violence is.
What we haven’t heard is a discussion of the structural causes of all of this and a long-term solution from it by the authorities.
So it’s very much framed as a violent uprising but what we really need to focus on is why it was created in the first place.
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Here are some of the latest pictures of the damage caused in the city of Marseille on the fourth night of violence in France.
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Funeral held for teenager killed by police
The funeral of Nahel, the teenager killed in a fatal police shooting on Tuesday, has started in the Paris suburb of Nanterre where he lived.
A large crowd has gathered at the local cemetery and the atmosphere is tense, a reporter from Agence France-Presse observed.
One mourner said:
We aren’t part of the family and didn’t know Nahel but we were very moved by what has happened in our town. So we wanted to express our condolences.
A young man who declined to be named but said he was a friend of Nahel’s told Reuters:
If you have the wrong skin colour, the police are much more dangerous to you.
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After further violence last night authorities in Marseille have announced that transport will stopped at 7pm local time.
Public events have also been cancelled or postponed, including the city’s Pride festival that was due to take place later today.
Communiqué de presse
— PRIDE MARSEILLE (@Pride_Marseille) June 30, 2023
La Pride Marseille 2023 reportée.
Contact : bureau@pride-marseille.com pic.twitter.com/d1man3ebTz
Nahel’s mother, identified as Mounia M, has spoken out and said she is angry with the officer who shot her son, but not the wider police force.
Associated Press reports that she told France 5 television:
He saw a little Arab-looking kid, he wanted to take his life.
A police officer cannot take his gun and fire at our children, take our children’s lives.
The southern port city of Marseille was again the scene of clashes and looting overnight.
At around 2am, Marseille police said they had made 88 arrests overnight of often masked and “very mobile” young people accused of looting or attempting to loot.
A major fire “linked to the riots” broke out in a supermarket, a police source told Agence France Presse.
Police said that looters also broke into a gun shop and took weapons.
City mayor Benoit Payan tweeted:
In Marseille, the scenes of looting and rioting are unacceptable.
France experienced a fourth consecutive night of unrest as riots, looting and vandalism continued in response to the fatal shooting of a 17-year-old boy by police during a traffic stop.
Burning garbage bins and vehicles could be seen in cities across the country as fireworks were fired towards police and buildings.
The interior ministry said that more than 1,300 people were arrested
More than 1,300 arrested in fourth night of unrest
More than 1,000 people were arrested in the fourth night of unrest, as family and friends prepare to bury the 17-year-old fatally shot by police.
Associated Press reports that France’s interior ministry said that 1,311 people were arrested as protesters once again clashed with police.
The government deployed 45,000 police around the country to try to stop the violence.
Despite an appeal to parents by President Emmanuel Macron to keep their children at home, street clashes between young protesters and police raged on.
About 2,500 fires were set and stores were ransacked, according to authorities.
As we reported in the post below, the funeral of Nahel, the boy who died on Tuesday, is set to take place early this afternoon.
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The funeral of Nahel, the boy who died in a fatal police shooting on Tuesday, is set to take place early this afternoon, according to reports.
It will be in Nanterre, in the western suburbs of Paris, where the teenager was from, and will begin with a visitation, to be followed by a mosque ceremony and then burial, Associated Press reports.
In a press release, Nahel’s family urged journalists not to come and appealed for calm ahead of the funeral.
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What has Macron said about the riots?
French president Emmanuel Macron has described the violence erupting after the death of the 17-year-old boy as “unacceptable and unjustifiable.”
He has so far stopped short of announcing a state of emergency, a tactic used by a previous French government in 2005 to quell rioting after the deaths of two boys while they fled police.
On Friday, he urged French parents to keep teenagers at home, proposed restrictions on social media and blamed videogames for the rioting.
Macron said his government would work with technology companies to establish procedures for “the removal of the most sensitive content.” He did not specify the content he had in mind but said, “I expect a spirit of responsibility from these platforms.”
French authorities also plan to request, when “useful,” the identities “of those who use these social networks to call for disorder or exacerbate the violence,” the president said.
Associated Press reports that Macron said a third of the individuals arrested Thursday night were “young people, sometimes very young,” and that “it’s the parents’ responsibility” to keep their children at home.
We sometimes have the feeling that some of them are living in the streets the video games that have intoxicated them.
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Last night, the French football team urged an end to the violence.
“The time of violence must give way to that of mourning, dialogue and reconstruction,” the team said in a statement posted on social media by their captain, Kylian Mbappé.
The team added they were “shocked by the brutal death of young Nahel” but asked that violence give way to “other peaceful and constructive ways of expressing oneself”.
— Kylian Mbappé (@KMbappe) June 30, 2023
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How did the riots start?
The unrest flared nationwide after Nahel M, a 17-year-old of Algerian and Moroccan descent, was shot by police on Tuesday during a traffic stop in a Paris suburb. His death, caught on video, has reignited longstanding complaints of police violence and racism.
The 38-year-old officer involved in the shooting, who has said he fired the shot because he feared he and his colleague or someone else could be hit by the car, has been charged with voluntary homicide and placed in provisional detention.
Nahel is due to be buried in a ceremony later today, according to the mayor of Nanterre, the Paris suburb where he lived and was killed. The family’s lawyers have asked journalists to stay away, saying it was “a day of reflection” for Nahel’s relatives.
Mayor Patrick Jarry said:
There’s a feeling of injustice in many residents’ minds, whether it’s about school achievement, getting a job, access to culture, housing and other life issues … I believe we are in that moment when we need to face the urgency [of the situation].
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Analysis: police tactics questioned after latest killing
The fatal shooting of a 17-year-old boy of north African descent during a police traffic stop in a Paris suburb, and the four consecutive nights of violence and rioting it has triggered, have once more thrown a spotlight on France’s policing structures and methods.
The office of the UN high commissioner for human rights (OHCHR) on Friday became the latest international organisation to criticise French policing, saying the shooting was a “moment for the country to seriously address the deep issues of racism and racial discrimination in law enforcement”.
The OHCHR spokesperson, Ravina Shamdasani, said authorities should ensure that the use of police force “always respects the principles of legality, necessity, proportionality, non-discrimination, precaution and accountability”.
The death of the teenager, identified as Nahel M, was the third fatal shooting by police during traffic stops in France in 2023. There were a record 13 such shootings last year, three in 2021 and two in 2020. Most of the victims since 2017 have been of black or Arab origin, reinforcing claims by rights groups of systemic racism within French law enforcement agencies.
“We have to go beyond saying that things need to calm down,” said Dominique Sopo, the head of the campaign group SOS Racisme. “The issue here is how we to ensure we have a police force that, when they see blacks and Arabs, don’t tend to shout at them [but] use racist terms against them and in some cases shoot them in the head.”
Beyond an institutional racism common in many police forces, French policing has a tendency to violence that has been highlighted by groups including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the Council of Europe. Police truncheons, teargas grenades, rubber bullets and larger “flash balls” have inflicted extensive physical injuries during demonstrations.
Long a taboo subject, French policing – seen by many critics as instinctively repressive and favouring disproportionate force – has become a major political issue, particularly since the gilets jaunes protests of 2018 and 2019 in which an estimated 2,500 protesters were injured, several of whom lost eyes or limbs.
Here are some images from. the unrest overnight:
Nearly 1,000 arrested overnight
Nearly 1,000 people in France were arrested and 80 police injured during a fourth night of unrest triggered by the fatal police shooting of a teenager, but officials claimed the situation was calmer than on the previous night.
Forty-five thousand police officers, including special forces, were deployed to respond to rioting across the country on Friday night, with the situation in two major cities – Marseille and Lyon – highlighted as particular chaotic, with buildings and vehicles torched and stores looted.
The ministry of the interior reported 994 were arrests made throughout France overnight, while 79 police and gendarmes were injured and 2,560 fires on public roads recorded. Despite this, the ministry said the protests were “of a lower intensity compared to the previous night”.
More than 80 arrests were made in Marseille, according to the interior ministry, and “significant reinforcements” were sent after the mayor, Benoit Payan, called on the national government to immediately send additional troops.
“The scenes of pillaging and violence are unacceptable,” Payan tweeted late on Friday, after police clashed with protesters.
Rioters will not win, says minister
Welcome to our live coverage of the ongoing unrest in France, which flared nationwide after Nahel M, a 17-year-old of Algerian and Moroccan descent, was shot by police on Tuesday during a traffic stop in a Paris suburb.
His death, caught on video, has reignited longstanding complaints of police violence and racism.
Nearly 1,000 people were arrested and 80 police injured during the fourth night of protests.
Forty-five thousand police officers, including special forces, were deployed to respond to rioting across the country on Friday night, with the situation in two major cities – Marseille and Lyon – highlighted as particular chaotic, with buildings and vehicles torched and stores looted.
However, officials claimed the situation was calmer than on the Thursday night.
France’s interior minister, Gérald Darmanin, met with police in the early hours of Saturday and denounced the “unacceptable violence in Lyon and Marseille” where public demonstrations were banned and public transport halted.
“It’s the republic that will win, not the rioters,” he said.
We’ll bring you the latest updates throughout the day.
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