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.

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.”

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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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.

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.

‘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.”

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].”