France Deploys 45,000 Police, Armored Vehicles to Quell Unrest
Editor
1 July 2023 16:40 WIB
TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Riots rocked cities in France for a fourth night as the government deployed 45,000 police and several armored vehicles to tackle unrest sparked by an officer's fatal shooting of a teenager.
France's interior ministry said that 994 people had been arrested overnight, compared with 875 the previous night, in violence that has plunged President Emmanuel Macron into the worst crisis of his leadership since the Yellow Vest protests.
"Violence committed during the night was lower in intensity compared to the previous night," the ministry said on Saturday on its Twitter account.
Buildings and vehicles have been torched and stores looted in unrest that has spread nationwide, including in cities such as Marseille, Lyon, Toulouse, Strasbourg, and Lille.
Protests also continued in Paris where Nahel M., a 17-year-old of Algerian and Moroccan descent, was shot during a traffic stop on Tuesday in the French capital's Nanterre suburb.
His funeral is due to be held later on Saturday, sources told Reuters.
Nahel's death, caught on video, has reignited longstanding complaints by poor and racially mixed urban communities of police violence and racism.
Friday night's arrests included 80 people in the southern city of Marseille, France's second-largest and home to many people of North African descent.
Social media images showed an explosion rocking Marseille's old port area. City authorities said they were investigating the cause but did not believe there were any casualties.
Rioters in central Marseille looted a gun store and stole some hunting rifles but no ammunition, police said. One person was arrested with a rifle likely from the store, police said. The store was now being guarded by police.
