WEB DESK
France witnessed unrest spread to major cities in a third night of riots on Thursday as President Emmanuel Macron fought to contain a mounting crisis triggered by the deadly police shooting of a teenager of Algerian and Moroccan descent during a traffic stop.
Forty thousand police officers were deployed across France – nearly four times the numbers mobilised on Wednesday – but there were few signs that government appeals to de-escalate the violence would quell the widespread anger. In Nanterre, the working-class town on the western outskirts of Paris where 17-year-old Nahel M. was shot dead on Tuesday, protesters torched cars, barricaded streets and hurled projectiles at police following a peaceful vigil.
Protesters scrawled “Vengeance for Nahel” across buildings and as night set a bank was lit on fire before firefighters put it out and an elite police unit deployed an armoured vehicle.
In central Paris, a Nike shoe store was broken into, and 14 people were arrested and 16 more were arrested with stolen objects after store windows were smashed along the rue de Rivoli shopping street, Paris police said.