By Dominique Vidalon,
PARIS France
French President Emmanuel Macron convened his cabinet for a second crisis meeting in two days on Friday, after the most widespread night of rioting yet in protest at the fatal shooting of a teenager by police.
At least 667 people were
arrested across France overnight, Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said on
Twitter on Friday, as rioters clashed with police in several cities, shops and
banks were torched and buses overturned.
Darmanin had deployed 40,000
officers on Thursday night in a bid to quell a third night of unrest.
But violence
broke out in Marseille, Lyon, Pau, Toulouse and Lille as well as parts
of Paris, including the working class suburb of Nanterre, where 17-year-old
Nahel M. - who was of Algerian and Moroccan descent - was shot dead on Tuesday,
Macron will meet with his
cabinet at 1100 GMT in Paris, likely cutting short his attendance at a European
Union summit in Brussels, his office said. The president has so far ruled out
declaring a state of emergency.
Transport Minister Clement
Beaune told RMC radio that public transport in the Paris region would be
severely disrupted on Friday and did not rule out an early closure of the
network. Twelve buses were set on fire and destroyed overnight in a depot in
Aubervilliers, in the north of Paris.
In Nanterre on Paris's western
outskirts, protesters torched cars, barricaded streets and hurled projectiles
at police following an earlier peaceful vigil held to pay tribute to the dead
boy.
In central Paris, a Nike shoe
store was broken into, and several people were arrested after store windows
were smashed along the Rue de Rivoli shopping street, Paris police said.
They said they had made 307
arrests and that nine police and fire officers had been injured.
In the south, police fired
tear gas grenades and Marseille's tourist hot-spot of Le Vieux Port was
evacuated as youths clashed with police.
In Roubaix, in northern
France, a fire destroyed the office of the TESSI company and several cars were
set on fire.
The unrest has revived
memories of riots in 2005 that convulsed France for three weeks and forced
then-president Jacques Chirac to declare a state of emergency.
That wave of violence erupted in the Paris suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois and spread across the country following the death of two young men who ended up being electrocuted in a power substation as they hid from police.
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