A visual timeline of the protests in France
The fatal shooting of a French teenager of Algerian and Moroccan descent by a police officer has sparked days of violent protests that have rocked France.
From Nanterre, the working-class area of Paris where the teen was shot, to the northern city of Lille and the Mediterranean city of Marseille, protesters have set fire to cars, damaged buildings and bus shelters during three nights of clashes with authorities.
Here’s how events unfolded.
The fatal shooting
On Tuesday, after a French police officer shot an unarmed teenager, French news media, citing anonymous police sources, initially reported that the teenager, driving a yellow Mercedes, plowed into police officers, prompting one of them to shoot.
But video soon surfaced on Twitter that seemed to contradict the police. The teen, the video shows, was stopped by two police officers, one of whom had his gun drawn. As the teen drives off, a loud bang is heard when an officer appears to fire at point-blank range in broad daylight.
The police officer who fired the shot later told detectives that he was trying to stop the driver from fleeing and feared he or his colleague would be injured if the driver escaped.
Violent clashes with the police
Protesters have said the shooting of the 17-year-old, who is publicly referred to only as Nahel M., is symbolic of deep-rooted racism within French law enforcement agencies and his history of disproportionate attacks against black people and immigrants of Arab descent, particularly in the poor urban suburbs of France.
During a second night of violent protests late Wednesday to early Thursday, youths clashed with police in Nanterre, where the shooting took place, which involved setting cars on fire, burning rubbish and throwing fireworks.
Nearly 200 people were arrested and 170 officers were injured, prompting Gérald Darmanin, the Interior Minister, to announce the deployment of 40,000 police officers across the country to ensure “a night of unacceptable violence against symbols of the Republic” – town halls, schools and police stations – was not repeated.
Build momentum
The Nanterre prosecutor’s office said the officer had no legal grounds to open fire and arrested the officer on charges of voluntary manslaughter. The swift action has failed to quell the demonstrations, which have grown in size.
Police on Thursday fired tear gas at protesters near the site of the shooting, Nelson Mandela Square, in Nanterre, a working-class neighborhood 15 minutes by commuter train from central Paris. A lawyer representing his family told the French television program “C à Vous” that he had no criminal record. But Pascal Prache, the chief prosecutor in Nanterre, said the teenager was known to police for failing to comply with traffic controls and had been summoned to juvenile court in September for such an incident.
“The land will keep burning until we get justice,” said Sonia Benyoun, 33, as she walked with a group of local mothers who knew Nahel from their neighborhood.
Even as President Emmanuel Macron took steps to restore calm, anger grew over the shooting of Nahel M. On Thursday night, protesters set fire to 2,000 cars and damaged nearly 500 buildings in dozens of cities across France.
A vigil for Nahel M.
Mounia M., Nahel M.’s mother, led the procession from a flatbed truck on Thursday, wearing a white T-shirt with the words “Justice for Nahel” and the date of her only child’s death. As the procession reached Nanterre courthouse, she held aloft a red torch as the crowd chanted the name of her only child.
She said in one interview with France 5 television that she learned that her son had died when she arrived at the hospital to which he had been taken. “I scream and I fall,” she said with tears in her eyes.
The worst violence took place in the Paris region, but until Thursday, the center of Paris was largely spared.
Then, during the third night of protests on Thursday, several shops in Paris, including a Nike outlet, were vandalized and looted as protesters and police clashed. More than 800 people were arrested in France and nearly 250 officers were injured, though none seriously, authorities said Friday.
Mr Macron, who left a European Union summit in Brussels early to return to France, said on Friday many of the protesters were teenagers and he appealed to parents to keep their children at home. He called the violence “unjustifiable” and said it had “no legitimacy whatsoever”, adding that the government would take new security measures for protests expected on Friday night.
Nahel M.’s funeral will take place on Saturday.
Catherine Porter And Aureline Breeden contributed reporting from Paris.
Additional production by Christina Kelso, Ang Li and Shawn Paik.