More Than 1,300 Arrested in France After Fourth Night of Rioting Over Police Killing

PARIS — Rioting raged in cities around France for a fourth night despite a huge police deployment and 1,311 arrests, with cars and buildings set ablaze and stores looted, as family and friends prepared Saturday to bury the 17-year-old whose killing by police unleashed the unrest.France’s Interior Ministry announced the new figure for arrests around the country, where 45,000 police officers fanned out in a so-far unsuccessful bid to quell violence.Despite an appeal to parents by President Macron to keep their children at home, street clashes between young protesters and police raged on. About 2,500 fires were set and stores were ransacked, according to authorities.The funeral ceremony for the teen, identified only as Nahel, who was killed by police in the Paris suburb of Nanterre on Tuesday, began on Saturday. Family and friends were viewing the open coffin before it will be taken to a mosque for a ceremony and later burial in a town cemetery.As the number of arrests continued to mount, the government suggested the violence was beginning to lessen thanks to tougher security measures. Since the unrest began on Tuesday night, police have made a total of 2,400 arrests — more than half of those in the fourth night of violence.Still, the damage was widespread, from Paris to Marseille and Lyon and even far away, in the French territories overseas, where a 54-year-old died after being hit by a stray bullet in French Guiana.Hundreds of police and firefighters have been injured, including 79 overnight, but authorities haven’t released injury tallies for protesters.France’s national soccer team — including international star Kylian Mbappe, an idol to many young people in the disadvantaged neighborhoods where the anger is rooted — pleaded for an end to the violence.“Many of us are from working-class neighborhoods, we too share this feeling of pain and sadness” over the killing of 17-year-old Nahel, the players said in a statement. “Violence resolves nothing. … There are other peaceful and constructive ways to express yourself.”They said it’s time for “mourning, dialogue and reconstruction” instead.Nahel’s mother, identified as Mounia M., told France 5 television that she was angry at the officer, but not at the police in general. “He saw a little Arab-looking kid, he wanted to take his life,” she said.“A police officer cannot take his gun and fire at our children, take our children’s lives,” she said. The family has roots in Algeria.The slaying of Nahel stirred up long-simmering tensions between police and young people in housing projects who struggle with poverty, unemployment and racial discrimination. The subsequent rioting is the worst France has seen in years and puts new pressure on Macron, who blamed social media for fueling violence.Anger erupted in the Paris suburb after Nahel’s death there Tuesday and quickly spread nationwide.

More Than 1,300 Arrested in France After Fourth Night of Rioting Over Police Killing

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