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Key events
Conservative and far-right politicians have urged the government to declare an emergency, something both the prime minister, Elisabeth Borne, and interior minister, Gérald Darmanin, have so far said they are not yet willing to do.
The president of the conservative Les Républicains party, Eric Ciotti, was the first to issue the demand on Thursday and on Friday Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally (Rassemblement National) followed suit.
MP and party spokesman Sébastien Chenu said a curfew should first be imposed on some neighbourhoods where the violence had been particularly extreme.
“We are calling for a curfew initially, then the imposition of a full state of emergency and the mobilisation of all the forces of law and order in the country,” Chenu told LCI television, adding that authorities had “not succeeding in taking back control” on Thursday night.
Eric Zemmour, the far-right, anti-immigration polemicist who made a much-publicised run for the French presidency last year, echoed the demand on Friday.
Zemmour told Europe1 radio that the government should “ferociously repress” the riots, describing them as a the “beginnings of a civil war, an ethnic war”.
A state of emergency in France can be declared “in the event of imminent danger resulting from serious breaches of public order”.
It allows the government to curtail free movement, including ordering the closure of certain public places and banning demonstrations.
Elisabeth Borne, the French prime minister, has called the violence “intolerable and inexcusable” and reaffirmed in a tweet her support for police, gendarmes and firefighters who were “carrying out their duties with courage”.
Ce matin à Matignon avec les ministres pour faire le point sur les violences et exactions de la nuit. Les actes commis sont insupportables et inexcusables.
Mon soutien et ma confiance renouvelés aux policiers, gendarmes et sapeurs-pompiers qui assurent leur mission avec courage. pic.twitter.com/yL7BnwNwxw
— Élisabeth BORNE (@Elisabeth_Borne) June 30, 2023
The transport minister, Clément Beaune, has told RMC radio that public transport in the Paris region would be severely disrupted on Friday. He did not rule out another early closure of the network, parts of which shut down at 9pm on Thursday.
Buses and trams as well as public transport depots were among the targets of rioters in several towns and cities, with 12 buses set on fire and destroyed in a depot in Aubervilliers, just north of Paris, and a tram torched in Lyon.
The teenager whose death on Tuesday sparked the rioting was a “well-liked” only child raised by a single mother, who had been studying for an electrician’s certificate.
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According to French media, Nahel M was was still living with his mother, Mounia, in the Vieux-Pont neighbourhood of Nanterre, about 9 miles (15km) from central Paris.
In 2021 he had enrolled on a course leading to an electrical qualification at the lycée Louis Blériot in nearby Suresnes, but had reportedly dropped out and was earning a living making deliveries and working in a fast-food shop.
The president of a local community rugby club described him as “a kid who really wanted to get on, to integrate professionally and socially”.
The public prosecutor, Pascal Prache, has said Nahel, who is too young to hold a full driving licence in France, was known to police for previously failing to comply with a traffic stop order, and French media said he had also been involved in several other previous run-ins with police.
According to BFM and other media, he was arrested last Saturday after failing to obey a traffic stop and notified that he would appear in youth court in September.
You can read more about Nahel in this profile:
France’s interior ministry has said 249 police and gendarmes were injured in Thursday night’s rioting, which rather than pitched battles between protesters and police was marked by looting of shops and attacks on public buildings.
Flagship branches of Nike and Zara were looted in Paris, French media have reported, while among other incidents a police station in the Pyrenean city of Pau was hit by a Molotov cocktail and an elementary school and a district office set on fire in Lille.
A total of 40,000 officers had been deployed, including 4,000 in the greater Paris region. The ministry said none suffered serious injuries.
Introduction
Good morning and welcome to the Guardian’s live coverage after a third consecutive night of rioting rocked France.
A total of 667 people were arrested across the country into the early hours of Friday morning amid continuing violence triggered by the fatal police shooting of a 17-year-old of Algerian and Moroccan descent during a traffic stop in a Paris suburb on Tuesday.
The teenager, identified as Nahel M, had been pulled over by two motorbike patrolmen for a range of traffic offences and was shot as he drove off. The 38-year-old police officer concerned has been charged with voluntary homicide and is in provisional detention.
Overnight, fireworks and projectiles were thrown at police, bins were set alight and buses and bus depots torched in towns and cities across the country, from Lille in the north to Marseille in the south.Shops were also looted in central Paris.
President Emmanuel Macron is cutting short his attendance at an EU summit in Brussels to host a cabinet crisis meeting at 1pm amid fears of a repeat of 2005, when the death of two young boys of African origin during a police chase in Clichy-sous-Bois outside Paris led to three weeks’ of rioting nationwide.
We’ll be bringing you the latest developments as they happen.
