In a second night of unrest after a 17-year-old boy was shot dead during a traffic stop, protesters on Wednesday shot fireworks at police and set cars ablaze in the working-class Paris suburb of Nanterre. At least 77 people have been arrested in France amid the protests, the BBC reported. The deceased North African origin teenager, named Nahel M, was shot at point-blank range after he refused a traffic stop and drove away. According to a report by news agency Reuters, the incident has fed into a deep-rooted perception of police brutality in the ethnically diverse suburbs of France’s biggest cities.


Shortly before midnight, overturned vehicles burned and fireworks fizzed at police lines on Nanterre’s Avenue Pablo Picasso, the report mentioned.


Police and protesters clashed in the northern city of Lille and in Toulouse in the southwest. Unrest was also witnessed in Amiens, Dijon, and the Essonne administrative department south of the French capital, the report mentioned a police spokesman as saying.






According to French media, incidents were reported in numerous other locations across the greater Paris region.


On social media, videos showed dozens of fireworks directed at the Montreuil town hall, on the eastern edge of Paris.






“To revolt like we did yesterday won't change things, we need to discuss and talk,” local resident Fatima said, as quoted by the report.


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Police Officer Being Probed For Voluntary Homicide


Previously, French President Emmanuel Macron called the shooting “unexplainable and inexcusable”.


A police officer is being probed for voluntary homicide for shooting the youth while prosecutors say he failed to comply with an order to stop his car, Reuters reported.


The interior ministry urged for calm and informed that 2,000 police have been mobilised in the Paris region.


Rights groups have accused law enforcement agencies in France of being infested with systemic racism, an allegation that Macron has previously denied.


A video on social media, verified by Reuters, showed two police officers beside the car, a Mercedes AMG, with one shooting at the driver at close range as the car pulled away. The teenager died shortly afterward from his wounds, the local prosecutor said.






“You have a video that is very clear: a police officer killed a young man of 17 years. You can see that the shooting is not within the rules,” said Yassine Bouzrou, a lawyer for the family, as quoted by the report.


A minute’s silence was observed in the French National Assembly, where Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne remarked that the shooting “seems clearly not to comply with the rules.”


The family has lodged a legal complaint against the officers for homicide, complicity in homicide, and false testimony, the family’s lawyer said, as per Reuters.


Third Fatal Shooting During Traffic Stops In France So Far In 2023


The latest killing was the third fatal shooting during traffic stops in France so far in 2023, down from a record 13 last year, a national police spokesperson said.


According to a Reuters tally, there were three such killings in 2021 and two in 2020 and the majority of victims since 2017 were Black or of Arab origin.


France’s human rights ombudsman has opened an inquiry into the death which is the sixth such inquiry into similar incidents in 2022 and 2023.


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