French President Emmanuel Macron held a crisis meeting Thursday morning after clashes and unrest spread beyond Paris’ suburbs over the police killing of a teenager on Tuesday.
(Bloomberg) — French President Emmanuel Macron held a crisis meeting Thursday morning after clashes and unrest spread beyond Paris’ suburbs over the police killing of a teenager on Tuesday.
Around 150 people were arrested throughout the country overnight, Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said in a tweet. He denounced some protesters’ attacks and fires set on public buildings, including schools and local town halls.
Nahel, 17, was shot at close range in the western suburb of Nanterre on Tuesday. Video on social media showed two police officers leaning into car and one of them shooting as the driver pulls away.
The tragedy casts a spotlight on French policing that will be politically difficult for Macron to manage. The situation has echoes of 2005, when riots broke out for weeks in suburbs across France after two boys died in an electricity substation following a police chase.
A spokesman for the police union Alliance said on France Info radio on Thursday that he couldn’t recall clashes as widespread since 2005. French Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne canceled a trip to the French region of Vendée scheduled for later in the day, Agence France-Presse reported.
A series of high-profile football stars, celebrities and political leaders have expressed outrage over the killing. “A bullet in the head…It’s always the same people for whom being in the wrong leads to death,” French national team player Mike Maignan wrote on Twitter
Nahel’s mother has called for a march to be held in Nanterre on Thursday afternoon.
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