Death of Nahel: Marseille, Paris, Grenoble… a fourth night of less generalized violence

2023-07-01 03:39:21

So we had to wait until midnight. For a long time, the areas of tension between rioters and the police seemed to be confined Friday evening to certain cities, such as Marseille, Lyon or Grenoble. To the point, even, of believing in a frank appeasement in Île-de-France, where many municipalities have decided to put in place a curfew.

That’s not quite what happened. At a time when Cinderella is supposed to have returned to fall asleep peacefully, an armored BRI truck appeared in the Pablo Picasso district in Nanterre. As the witness of the scale of the device deployed in the four corners of the country. Not far from there, a truck has just caught fire. The first mortar shots are heard. Just like fire truck sirens. The rioters try to set up barricades, but the police, deployed in large numbers in the bereaved city, intervene quickly. This did not prevent the departure of several vehicle fires, including a bus. Later, nine individuals armed with molotov cocktails were apprehended by the police, the prefecture said on social networks.

VIDEO. Car-ram, looting, fires… Stores targeted

In Paris, the situation became tense in the early evening at the Place de la Concorde, where the police put an end to a prohibited gathering. For several tens of minutes, the rue de Rivoli turned into a theater of clashes between demonstrators and the police. The latter also intervened later in Les Halles.

Other Ile-de-France towns were affected by these conflagrations. In Bondy, looters attacked a Conforama store and a Darty. Despite several charges led by the Raid, some managed to seize flat screens and boxes. In Saint-Denis, rioters tried to set fire to the administrative center, authorities reported to Le Parisien. In Seine-et-Marne, the prefecture affirms that the incidents are not really comparable to those of the day before. The authorities still had to deal with the start of a fire at the Abbey shopping center in Dammarie-les-Lys.

“The republic will win, not the rioters”

In the Val-d’Oise, the town hall of Persan was particularly affected. According to our information, the building was attacked by several dozen individuals. It was then vandalized before being set on fire. The situation was also tense in Argenteuil, where mortar fire and burning cars were reported.

But it is in Lyon, Marseille or even Grenoble that the most serious events have been observed. Earlier in the evening, many rioters engaged in a veritable looting of city centers. In Marseille, a strong detonation was even felt on the Old Port without the exact reasons being known at the time of writing these lines. It is in Marseille that the police have carried out the greatest number of arrests. In particular, an armory was robbed. The overflows were such that the mayor of the city Benoît Payan called for police reinforcements to deal with the damage. A request immediately accepted by the Ministry of the Interior.

For several hours, in Lyon, violent clashes opposed the rioters and the police. Especially when the police were forced to disperse an unauthorized rally in tribute to Nahel. Smashed windows, looted shops and even Kalashnikov fire have also been recorded by the authorities. The interior of a police station was ransacked in the 4th arrondissement of the city.

#security | The RAID is engaged with the BRI in the city center of #Lyon to put an end to attacks on businesses. They participated in the 31 arrests carried out at this time in the agglomeration. pic.twitter.com/wrsz1XCc7T

— Prefect of the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes and Rhône region (@prefetrhone) June 30, 2023

In Grenoble, hundreds of young people have taken over the city center, where they have constantly robbed stores, including clothing and mobile phone brands. In the middle of the night, the Minister of the Interior also deplored acts of extreme gravity in Montpellier. In Strasbourg, in the middle of the afternoon, looters attacked an Apple Store.

Traveling to Mantes-la-Jolie, the Minister of the Interior seems to have wanted to be somewhat optimistic about the evolution of this violence. “The republic will win, not the rioters,” he told the television cameras. Because if hundreds of individuals were arrested that night, he notes that the violence of the night was of a “much less” intensity, with “extremely calm departments”.