France is witnessing one of its worst protests in years as arson, violence and loot continues over the killing of a teenage delivery boy by French police on Tuesday. As the unrest swept over the country on the fourth night on Friday, around 471 arrests were made and 45,000 police officers were deployed to contain the raging anger of people. Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin said that Friday night has been far calmer than Thursday despite at least 471 arrests so far, reported BBC. Over 1,000 have been arrested since the violence erupted in France.
The minister was speaking during a night visit to Yvelines west of Paris. He reportedly said that they were seeing a "downturn" in violence.
The violence was of "much less intensity" and it was "extremely calm" in some departments, he was quoted as saying by BBC.
According to Reuters, France deployed 45,000 police officers and some armoured vehicles on the streets on Saturday. Buildings and vehicles have been torched and stores looted, and the violence has plunged President Emmanuel Macron into the gravest crisis of his leadership since the Yellow Vest protests that started in 2018, the report stated.
Unrest has spread nationwide, including in cities such as Marseille, Lyon, Toulouse, Strasbourg and Lille as well as Paris where Nahel M., a 17-year-old of Algerian and Moroccan descent, was shot on Tuesday in the Nanterre suburb.
His death was caught on video and it reignited longstanding complaints by poor and racially mixed urban communities of police violence and racism, the report further mentioned.
Friday night's arrests included 80 people in the southern city of Marseille, France's second-largest and home to many people of North African descent.
In central Marseille, Rioters looted a gun store and stole some hunting rifles but no ammunition, police said, as quoted in the report.
Marseille Mayor Benoit Payan called on the national government to immediately send additional troops. "The scenes of pillaging and violence are unacceptable," he said in a tweet late on Friday. Darmanin asked local authorities across France to halt bus and tram traffic from 9 p.m. (1900 GMT) and said 45,000 officers were being deployed, 5,000 more than on Thursday.
"The next hours will be decisive and I know I can count on your flawless efforts," he wrote to firefighters and police officers as protests intensified.
This comes after French President Emmanuel Macron on Friday urged parents to keep kid rioters off the streets, adding that some young people looked to be emulating violent video games that had "intoxicated" them, news agency AFP reported. Speaking after chairing a crisis security meeting, the 45-year-old head of state stated that around one-third of those detained over three nights of riots were "young, or very young."
"It's the responsibility of parents to keep them at home. It's not the state's job to act in their place," President Emmanuel Macron stated.
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