France riots: Looters break into gun shop as hundreds arrested on fourth night of violence
Looters broke into a gun shop in Marseille and hundreds of arrests were made across France as riots continued for a fourth night.
Violent protests spread throughout the country after a 17-year-old, named as Nahel M, was shot by police during a traffic stop in the Paris suburb of Nanterre on Tuesday.
In the aftermath, people have taken to the streets on four consecutive nights to protest, setting cars alight, throwing stones and fireworks, and ransacking shops.
Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin told TF1 television there had already been 471 arrests made so far overnight, with more than 80 in Marseille.
Police said looters broke into a shop selling guns in the city and ran off with several hunting rifles. One person was arrested nearby with one of the weapons, officers said.
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.
The mayor of the city, Benoit Payan, has called for the national government to send additional troops to the city, describing scenes of unacceptable “pillaging and violence”.
In a message to fire and police forces, interior minister Darmanin said: “The next hours will be decisive and I know I can count on your flawless efforts.”
He added that 45,000 extra police officers, including paramilitary gendarmes, had been deployed across France on Friday – 5,000 more than the previous night and that though the level of violence was “unacceptable” the country was not yet at the point where the government felt it needed to declare a state of emergency.
Clashes were reported in several other cities, including Lyon in the southeast.
There was also looting reported earlier in Strasbourg in broad daylight, including from an Apple store and several supermarkets.
In central Paris, police removed a group of protesters from the Place de la Concorde, while fires were started in other parts of the capital.
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Fireworks lit in Lyon streets as rioting continues across France
French football superstar Kylian Mbappe, who previously described Nahel’s death as an “unacceptable situation”, appealed for calm.
He wrote on Twitter: “Violence solves nothing… There are other peaceful and constructive ways to express yourself. It is in this that our energies and our thoughts must be concentrated.
“The time of violence must end to give way to that of mourning, dialogue and reconstruction.”
A man stands near a burning container in Paris on Friday
People run away during clashes with police in Lyon. Pic: AP
Police officers face off with protesters in Place de la
Concorde, Paris, on Friday evening. Pic: AP
Police said 917 arrests were made during clashes overnight on Thursday and into Friday morning.
Officials said the average age of those detained was 17 – with some as young as 13.
Some key locations where the rioting has taken place
Elsewhere across France, a young man has died after he fell from the roof of a supermarket in the city of Rouen during rioting, local authorities said.
A police source claimed the man plunged from the building, in the suburb of Petit-Quevilly in the Bruyeres shopping centre, while it was being looted overnight on Thursday.
President Emmanuel Macron has urged parents to keep teenagers at home to limit potential rioting in the coming days.
He also blamed social media for fuelling copycat violence and said it had played a “significant role in the events of the past few days”.
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View of burnt buses at a RATP bus depot in Aubervilliers, damaged during night clashes
Mr Macron has also been urged to get a grip on the crisis after going to an Elton John concert on Wednesday, the day after the shooting.
“While France was on fire, Macron was not at the side of his minister of the interior or the police, but he preferred to applaud Elton John,” said Thierry Mariani, an MEP for National Rally.
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Third night of rioting in France
Youths ‘intoxicated by video games’
Mr Macron said a third of the individuals arrested on Thursday 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 [of] the video games that have intoxicated them,” he said of rioters.
On Friday, following a second crisis meeting, Mr Darmanin issued an order to stop buses and tram services at night.
When asked on French TV if the government might declare a state of emergency, the minister said: “Quite simply, we’re not ruling out any hypothesis and we’ll see after tonight what the President of the Republic chooses.”
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Authorities in the Paris region had already announced a transport shutdown to protect staff and passengers. The city’s Metro system will also shut an hour earlier this weekend following a request from local police.
Concerts by Canadian-born French pop star Mylène Farmer – scheduled to have been held at Paris’ Stade de France stadium on Friday and Saturday night – have been cancelled due to the riots, according to an official from the Seine-Saint-Denis district.
Tour de France organisers said they were ready to adapt to any situation when the bicycle race enters the country on Monday after starting in the Spanish city of Bilbao.
On Thursday, 40,000 police officers were deployed across France – nearly four times the number mobilised on Wednesday.
French police stand in position as fireworks go off during clashes with youth on Thursday
‘He didn’t want to kill him’
Thus far, appeals from the government to de-escalate the situation continue to fall on deaf ears.
In Nanterre, where the police shooting took place, protesters torched cars, barricaded streets and hurled projectiles at police following a vigil.
Armoured police vehicles rammed through the charred remains of cars that had been flipped and set ablaze in the Paris suburb.
Meanwhile, the police officer who shot and killed the teenager asked the family of the boy for forgiveness.
His lawyer Laurent-Franck Lienard told BFMTV: “The first words he pronounced were to say sorry and the last words he said were to say sorry to the family.
“He is devastated, he doesn’t get up in the morning to kill people. He didn’t want to kill him.”
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France protests: Car smashes into Lidl
Mr Lienard added that his client’s detention was being used to try to calm rioters.
The teenager’s burial is scheduled for Saturday, according to Nanterre Mayor Patrick Jarry, who said the country needs to “push for changes” in disadvantaged neighbourhoods.
“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,” he said.
“I believe we are in that moment when we need to face the urgency [of the situation].”
World
Egypt: Two Britons believed to be among 16 missing as tourist boat sinks after being ‘hit by large wave’
Two Britons are believed to be among more than a dozen people missing after a boat sank in the Red Sea off the Egyptian coast.
The yacht, called Sea Story, had 44 people on board, including 31 tourists of varying nationalities and 13 crew.
Authorities are searching for 16 people, including 12 foreign nationals and four Egyptians, the governor of the Red Sea region said, adding that 28 other people had been rescued.
Preliminary reports suggested a sudden large wave struck the vessel, capsizing it within about five minutes, governor Amr Hanafi said.
“Some passengers were in their cabins, which is why they were unable to escape,” he added in a statement.
Survivors rescued from the Sea Story in Marsa Alam. Pic: STR/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock
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Passengers rescued from sunken tourist boat
The people who were rescued only suffered minor injuries such as bruises and scrapes with none needing hospital treatment.
A Foreign, Commonwealth and Development office spokesperson said: “We are providing consular support to a number of British nationals and their families following an incident in Egypt and are in contact with the local authorities.”
The foreign nationals aboard the 34-metre-long vessel, owned by an Egyptian national, included Americans, Belgians, British, Chinese, Finns, Germans, Irish, Poles, Slovakians, Spanish, and Swiss.
Sea Story had no technical problems, obtained all required permits before the trip, and was last checked for naval safety in March, according to officials.
The four-deck, wooden-hulled motor yacht was part of a multi-day diving trip when it went down near the coastal town of Marsa Alam following warnings about rough weather.
Officials said a distress call was received at 5.30am local time on Monday.
The boat had left Port Ghalib in Marsa Alam on Sunday and was scheduled to reach its destination of Hurghada Marina on 29 November.
The Sea Story had 44 people on board. File pic: Dive Pro Liveaboard
Some survivors had been airlifted to safety on a helicopter, officials said.
The firm that operates the yacht, Dive Pro Liveaboard in Hurghada, said it has no information on the matter.
According to its maker’s website, the Sea Story was built in 2022.
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The incident comes after the Egyptian Meteorological Authority issued a warning on Saturday about turbulence and high waves on the Red Sea.
The organisation had advised against maritime activity for Sunday and Monday.
Some tourist companies have stopped or limited operations on the Red Sea due to the potential dangers from conflicts in the region.
A motion has been filed to drop the charges against Donald Trump of plotting to overturn the 2020 US presidential election result.
Mr Trump was first indicted on four felonies in August 2023: Conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of and an attempt to obstruct an official proceeding, and conspiracy against rights.
The president-elect pleaded not guilty to all charges and the case was then put on hold for months as Mr Trump’s team argued he could not be prosecuted.
Special Counsel Jack Smith. Pic: Reuters
Donald Trump supporters storm the US Capitol
On Monday, prosecutors working with special counsel Jack Smith, who had led the investigation, asked a federal judge to dismiss the case over long-standing US justice department policy, dating back to the 1970s, that presidents cannot be prosecuted while in office.
It marks the end of the department’s landmark effort to hold Mr Trump accountable for the attack on the US Capitol on 6 January 2021 when thousands of Trump supporters assaulted police, broke through barricades, and swarmed the Capitol in a bid to prevent the US Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory.
Mr Smith’s team had been assessing how to wind down both the election interference case and the separate classified documents case in the wake of Mr Trump’s election victory over vice president Kamala Harris earlier this month, effectively killing any chance of success for the case.
In court papers, prosecutors said “the [US] Constitution requires that this case be dismissed before the defendant is inaugurated”.
They said the ban [on prosecuting sitting presidents] “is categorical and does not turn on the gravity of the crimes charged, the strength of the government’s proof, or the merits of the prosecution, which the government stands fully behind”.
Mr Trump, who has said he would sack Mr Smith as soon as he takes office in January, and promised to pardon some convicted rioters, has long dismissed both the 2020 election interference case and the separate classified documents case as politically motivated.
Trump supporters try to break through a police barrier at the Capitol in Washington. Pic: AP
He was accused of illegally keeping classified papers after leaving office in 2021, some of which were allegedly found in his Mar-a-Lago home in Florida.
The election interference case stalled after the US Supreme Court ruled in July that former presidents have broad immunity from prosecution, which Mr Trump’s lawyers exploited to demand the charges against him be dismissed.
Mr Smith’s request to drop the case still needs to be approved by US District Judge Tanya Chutkan.
No date had been set for a trial.
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At least 1,500 cases have been brought against those accused of trying to overthrow the election result on 6 January 2021, resulting in more than 1,100 convictions, the Associated Press said.
More than 950 defendants have been sentenced and 600 of them jailed for terms ranging from a few days to 22 years.
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