Police and firefighters fought to contain protesters and extinguish numerous fires overnight that damaged schools, police stations and town halls or other public buildings, according to a national police spokesman. The national police on Thursday reported fires or skirmishes in several cities overnight, from Toulouse in the south to Lille in the north, although the nexus of the tensions was Nanterre and other Paris suburbs.
Police arrested 150 people across the country, more than half of them in the Paris region, the spokesperson said. She was not authorized to be named publicly according to police rules.
The number of injured was not immediately released.
French President Emmanuel Macron held an emergency security meeting on Thursday about the violence.
“These acts are totally unjustifiable,” Macron said at the beginning of the meeting, whose objective was to secure critical points and plan the coming days “so that full peace can return.”
Macron also said it was time for “remembrance and respect” as Nahel’s mother called for a silent march on Thursday in his honor in the square where he was killed.
Several vehicles were set on fire in Nanterre and protesters set off fireworks and threw rocks at police, who fired repeated bursts of tear gas. Flames shot from three stories of a building and a fire was reported at a power plant. The fire damaged the town hall in the Paris suburb of L’Ile-Saint-Denis, not far from France’s national stadium and the venue for the 2024 Paris Olympics.
The police officer accused of the murder is in custody on suspicion of manslaughter and could face preliminary charges as soon as Thursday, according to the Nanterre prosecutor’s office.
French activists renewed calls to address what they see as systemic police abuse, particularly in neighborhoods like the one where Nahel lived, where many residents struggle with poverty and racial or class discrimination. Government officials condemned the murder and tried to distance themselves from the police officer’s actions.
Macron called the murder “inexplicable and inexcusable” and called for calm. “Nothing justifies the death of a young man,” he told reporters in Marseille on Wednesday.
Videos of the shooting shared online show two police officers leaning on the driver’s side window of a yellow car before the vehicle drives away when an officer fires into the window. Videos show the car then crashed into a nearby pole.
The driver died at the scene, the prosecutor’s office said.
