France riots – live: Children as young as 12 detained for attacking police amid Paris protests

Interior minister Gerald Darmanin took aim at families who had allowed children to wreak havoc on the streets, saying the average of those arrested was 17 with some as young as 12.

“It’s not up to the national police or the gendarmerie or the mayor or the state to solve the problem of a 12-year-old setting fire to a school. It’s a question of parental authority,” Mr Darmanin said during a visit to Reims.

Some 45,000 police would be deployed for a fourth consecutive night, he said, to try to keep a lid on unrest which has seen more than 5,600 cars torched, 1,000 private properties burned down or damaged and 250 police stations attacked.

Defiant gatherings were held outside town halls across France on Monday following a wave of rioting triggered by the fatal police shooting of a teenager of north African descent.

The death of Nahel, a 17-year-old with Algerian and Moroccan parents, has tapped a deep vein of anti-police resentment in the poor and racially mixed suburbs of major French cities -- known as banlieues -- where Muslim communities of north African descent in particular have long accused police of racial profiling and violent tactics.

Since he was shot last Tuesday, rioters have torched cars, looted stores and targeted town halls, state schools and state-owned properties.

What started as an uprising in the banlieues’ high-rise estates morphed into a broader outpouring of hate and anger toward the state and opportunistic violence.

The unrest, though, has not prompted the kind of government soul-searching on race which followed turmoil over similar incidents in other Western countries, such as Black Lives Matter protests in the United States or race riots at times in Britain.

Instead, the French government points to underprivileged in low-income urban neighbourhoods and juvenile delinquency, a reflection of the state’s belief that citizens are united under a single French identity, regardless of race or ethnicity.

Protests across France sparked by the police shooting of a 17-year-old last Tuesday have been described as like a “mini civil war” by a British national living in Marseille.

Six nights of violent unrest, which appeared to be easing overnight into Monday, were driven by a backlash against a French state that many young people with immigrant roots say routinely discriminates against them.

Riots have affected several areas of the country, including the Paris suburb of Nanterre, where the teenager Nahel Merzouk was killed.

Benjamin Klene, 33, from Oxford, who lives near the train station, the Gare St Charles, in Marseille, has described the riots and police presence as “disturbing” and “very tense”.

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The anger from the fatal shooting of 17-year-old Nahel in suburban Paris has descended into attacks against symbols of the state, widespread arson and nighttime looting.

The interior minister said during a visit to a town in central France that he’s been proven right to put 45,000 police on the streets in recent nights — and did so again Monday night. But he added that police “can’t educate children in the place of their parents.”

President Emmanuel Macron is set to meet with 220 mayors later on Tuesday, after the protests spread from Paris to impact towns and cities across France.

Nanterre mayor Patrick Jarry said: “We know all too well that this violence penalises first and foremost the children, the people and the families of our neighbourhoods and all of the residents of our city.

“We want justice to be done for Nahel and for the appeal by the family and notably by his grandmother for an end to the violence and destruction to be heard and respected.”

Children as young as 12 have been detained for attacking police and setting fires, said interior minister Gerald Darmanin.

In the Paris suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois, where a fire also struck the town hall, residents over the weekend said anger had simmered for years and many said the government had done little to help them.

“Young people are afraid to die by the hands of police. They are hopeless. They are bored and they need something to distract them so they don’t hang out in the streets,” said Samba Seck, 39.

President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday was meeting with mayors of 220 towns from across the country which were hit by violence.

Across France, 34 buildings — many of them linked to the government — were attacked from Sunday into Monday, along with 297 vehicles.

Mr Macron last week blamed social media for the spread of the unrest and called on parents to take responsibility for their teenagers.

Justice minister Eric Dupond-Moretti told France Inter radio that parents who abdicated that responsibility, “either through disinterest or deliberately,” would be prosecuted.

The anger has descended into attacks against symbols of the state, widespread arson and nighttime looting. The interior minister said during a visit to a town in central France that he’s been proven right to put 45,000 police on the streets in recent nights — and did so again Monday night. But he added that police “can’t educate children in the place of their parents.”

The average age of the 3,354 people arrested over the past week was 17, the interior minister said. But the problem of discrimination strikes all ages, according to Ahmed Djamai, a 58-year-old born in Nanterre who attended a solidarity gathering Monday at the town hall.

Mr Djamai said police stopped him not long ago and demanded a residence permit, even though he neither has nor needs one as a French citizen. He said the problem won’t go away even as the violence subsides.

“Our second, third and fourth-generation children face the same problem when they go out to get a job, when they go to prestigious universities,” he said.

“They’re not accepted. So even now, the problem is social, but it’s also one of identity. It goes much deeper than that.”

Crowds gathered at town halls across France on Monday to show solidarity with local governments targeted in six nights of violence touched off by the fatal police shooting of a 17-year-old in suburban Paris.

The unrest, which appeared to be easing on Sunday night, was driven by a mainly teenage backlash in the suburbs and urban housing projects against a French state that many young people with immigrant roots say routinely discriminates against them.

In all, 99 town halls have been attacked in the violence, the Interior Ministry said, including a weekend attempt to ram the home of one mayor and apparently set it afire.

In the municipality of l’Hay-les-Les Roses in the southern suburbs of Paris, hundreds of people gathered on Monday to support mayor Vincent Jeanbrun, whose wife and one of his young children were injured when a car set afire by rioters rammed into his home early on Sunday while they slept.

The authorities said it would be prosecuted as an attempted homicide. The incident prompted an outpouring of support for local governments in many towns where the city hall is often literally central to public life.

“We saw the real face of the rioters, that of assassins,” Mr Jeanbrun said in an emotional speech. France and “democracy itself” were being attacked in days of rioting.

“This won’t last last,” the mayor said, adding that the “silent majority” is speaking out to say “Stop. This is enough!” The crowd responded with the chant “Enough!”

Nahel Merzouk’s death has fed longstanding complaints of police violence and systemic racism inside law enforcement agencies from rights groups and within the low-income, racially mixed suburbs that ring major cities in France. Authorities deny that.

Even though the police officer involved is under investigation for voluntary homicide and President Emmanuel Macron has condemned the shooting, public anger has spilled onto streets across France. Police made 180 arrests during a second night of unrest into Thursday. Some 40,000 officers were deployed to curb the trouble, 5,000 in the Paris region.

The killing was the third fatal shooting during traffic stops in France so far in 2023, down from a record 13 last year. The majority of victims of such shootings since 2017 were Black or of Arab origin.