PARIS: A hundred and fifty people were arrested in France after a second night of unrest across the country, interior minister Gerald Darmanin said on Thursday, following the fatal shooting by police of a 17-year-old boy during a traffic stop.
French president Emmanuel Macron meanwhile described the violence that spread throughout the country as “unjustifiable.”
He was speaking at the start of a crisis meeting with senior ministers. On Wednesday the president also said the fatal shooting was “inexcusable.”
The interior ministry said dozens of police officers were injured during the clashes.
“A night of unbearable violence against symbols of the Republic: town halls, schools and police stations put ablaze or attacked. 150 arrests,” Darmanin said on his Twitter account.
The use of lethal force by officers in the working-class Paris suburb of Nanterre against the teenager, who was of North African origin, has fed into a deep-rooted perception of police brutality in the ethnically diverse districts of France’s biggest cities.
The interior ministry had said Wednesday on that 2,000 police had been mobilized in the Paris region, and shortly before midnight on Nanterre’s Avenue Pablo Picasso, a trail of overturned vehicles burned as fireworks fizzed at police lines.
Police clashed with protesters in the northern city of Lille and in Toulouse in the southwest, and there was also unrest in Amiens, Dijon and the Essonne administrative department south of the French capital, a police spokesman said.
The Nanterre prosecutor is scheduled to update media on an ongoing investigation into Tuesday’s fatal shooting of the teenager at an 11:00 press conference.
