LIVE. More than 470 arrests during fourth night of unrest in France – Nahel will be buried today | Abroad

In France, 17-year-old Nahel is buried today. He was shot dead by police on Tuesday when he tried to drive away from the officers who had stopped his car for traffic violations. The boy’s family has asked the media to stay away from the funeral because it is “a day of reflection” for the relatives.

So far, 471 arrests have been made across France overnight. That is the balance that Minister of the Interior Gérald Darmanin made up about half past two in the morning. He visited a police station in Mantes-la-Jolie to encourage the troops. According to him, the violence in the night from Friday to Saturday was “much less intense” and there were “extremely quiet” departments.

Not only on the French mainland, but also in some French overseas territories, there have been riots following the death of a French teenager during a police check in Nanterre earlier this week. For example, in Cayenne, the capital of French Guiana, a man died after being hit by a bullet in unclear circumstances, local authorities report.

According to media reports, the bullet was fired by a rioter in the direction of police on the night from Thursday to Friday, but it would have ricocheted and hit a man who was on a balcony. Fires were also set and cars destroyed here and there in the center of the city.

The unrest also spread to Martinique that same night, where about twenty to thirty masked men in the capital Fort-de-France threw stones at the police and set fire to garbage cans in various places. The situation was also tense on the island of Réunion.

Just after 1 a.m., the preliminary report reported 341 arrests in France. ‘BFMTV’ learned this from the cabinet of Minister of the Interior Gérald Darmanin. 80 of the arrests took place in Marseille, where the mayor asked Paris for “immediate reinforcement” of the security forces. According to the minister, this was complied with.

Marseille mayor Benoît Payan has asked for the security services in his city to be strengthened. “In Marseille, the scenes of looting and violence are unacceptable. I condemn this vandalism with total determination and call on the state to immediately send additional security forces,” Payan wrote on Twitter on Friday evening about half past eleven. 63 people had been arrested and the situation seems to continue to escalate.

Grenoble, Saint-Etienne and Lyon, among others, are also the scene of looting and riots between masked demonstrators and the police on Friday evening. In Lyon, for example, a police station was looted and groups of young people in the pedestrian zone looted various shops and set fire to rubbish bins. In Grenoble, numerous shops – especially clothing and telephone shops – were also emptied and cars went up in flames in a suburb of the city.

Hundreds of young people destroyed shop windows in the center of Saint-Etienne, after which shops were looted here too, a correspondent for the French news agency AFP noted.

In Strasbourg, the incidents began in broad daylight on Friday afternoon and an Apple Store was destroyed.

In Brussels, a total of about 101 people have already been preventively arrested on Friday afternoon and evening after people gathered again in some neighborhoods to protest the death of a teenager in Nanterre, France. So far, no significant incidents have occurred.

In the Brussels Capital/Ixelles police zone, there were 94 administrative arrests, of which 80 were minors and 14 were adults. The police of the Brussels-North zone made 7 administrative arrests. That was the balance released just after midnight.

On Thursday evening, incidents occurred in various places in Brussels with young people confronting the police following the death of 17-year-old Nahel in France. The security forces were therefore on high alert on Friday, but no major incidents occurred.

The players of the French national football team, led by figurehead Kylian Mbappé, are calling for an end to the unrest that has been plaguing several French cities for several nights now: “The time of violence must be over and give way to a time of mourning, dialogue and reconstruction”, it sounds in a text message which the Paris Saint-Germain star player posted online on Friday evening.

“Like all French, we were shocked by the brutal death of young Nahel. First of all, our thoughts go out to him and his family, to whom we would like to express our sincere condolences,” Mbappé and co. off shore. “Obviously, we cannot remain insensitive to the circumstances in which this unacceptable death took place.”

“Since this tragic event, we have witnessed the expression of popular anger whose background we understand, but whose form we cannot accept. Many of us, coming from the ‘quartiers Populaires’, share these feelings of pain and sorrow. But violence solves nothing, much less when it inevitably and unceasingly turns against those who express it, their families, loved ones and neighbours.”

‘Les Bleus’ therefore want an immediate end to the violence. “In this context of extreme tension, we cannot remain silent and, with our civic sense, we call for calm, awareness and responsibility. The ‘living together’ to which we are attached is in danger and it is the responsibility of all of us to preserve it. “

“There are other peaceful and constructive ways to express yourself. That is where we should focus our energy and our thoughts,” the French footballers conclude.