French unrest eases after six nights of protests

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A 24-year-old firefighter has died while fighting a blaze in the northern Paris suburb of Saint-Denis in a sixth night of unrest after the fatal police shooting of a teenager last week.

But the number of arrests fell for a second consecutive night on Sunday in a sign that the violence that erupted on the streets of France in response to the death of 17-year-old Nahel may be abating.

As the scale of arrests and violent incidents eased, President Emmanuel Macron met ministers on Sunday to chart a political road map out of the crisis.

France’s interior ministry said on Monday that 157 people had been arrested overnight, compared with 773 on Saturday night and 1,311 on Friday night.

“A 17 year-old boy cannot take a bullet in the chest and die, so naturally that leads to a lot of emotion, and with this emotion, anger. But ransacking a shop has nothing to do with this emotion,” justice minister Éric Dupond-Moretti told France Inter, adding that some were using the killing as a “pretext” for violent behaviour.

A police investigation is under way into the circumstances of the death of the firefighter who died attending a blaze at a garage. “My sincere and sad condolences to the family, friends, and colleagues,” Gérald Darmanin, the interior minister, wrote on Twitter.

Three police officers were injured on Sunday night, compared with almost 50 the previous night. Police have maintained a heavy presence across the country, with 45,000 officers active overnight for the past three nights.

A total of 3,354 people have now been arrested since a police officer shot Nahel, a teenager of north African descent from the Parisian suburb of Nanterre during a traffic stop last Tuesday. Protests, riots and vandalism have rocked France since the incident, which was captured on a video that quickly went viral.

An attack on the house of a mayor in L’Haÿ-les-Roses on Saturday night was condemned by politicians across France. Municipal buildings, town halls, schools and other public facilities have been targeted by rioters as supposed symbols of the state.

“We are all very affected,” L’Haÿ-les-Roses mayor Vincent Jeanbrun said of his family on BFM TV. “Young people need to be told: ‘There is a republican order, laws and authority.’ . . . These are not dirty words. Because these things exist, we can then have liberty and equality.”

Macron will meet the leaders of the senate and the national assembly on Monday and more than 220 mayors from across France on Tuesday, a person present at the government’s crisis meeting on Sunday said.