Unrest continued in France for a second night as security forces deployed in their thousands to quell protests over the killing of a 17-year-old by police, which French President Emmanuel Macron described as “inexcusable” while also pleading for calm as justice took its course.

Anger over the killing spawned protests in multiple towns around Paris on Tuesday and Wednesday nights, with Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin announcing that 150 arrests had been made across the country and that town halls, schools and police stations were set on fire or attacked.

“A night of unbearable violence against symbols of the Republic,” Darmanin wrote in a tweet on Thursday. “Shame on those who did not call for calm,” he added.

Approximately 2,000 riot police were called up in suburbs around Paris on Wednesday night following the fatal, point-blank range shooting on Tuesday morning of the teenager during a traffic check in the Paris suburb of Nanterre.

Protesters set fire to rubbish bins and fireworks were set off in Nanterre on Wednesday night, as well as in other communes of the Hauts-de-Seine region to the west of Paris, and in the eastern city of Dijon. In the Essonne region to the south of the capital, a group of people set a bus on fire after having all the passengers get off, police said.

In the southern city of Toulouse, several cars were torched and responding police and firefighters were pelted with projectiles as thick black smoke billowed high into the sky, a police source said.

Macron said during an official visit to Marseille in southern France that the killing of the teenager was “inexplicable and unforgivable”.

Source Al Jazeera

BDST: 1544 HRS, JUNE 29, 2023
MSK