Youths clash with French police, loot stores in 4th day of riots triggered by fatal police shooting
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Young rioters clashed with police and looted stores Friday in a fourth day of violence in France triggered by the deadly police shooting of a teen, piling more pressure on President Emmanuel Macron after he appealed to parents to keep children off the streets and blamed social media for furling unrest.
Young rioters clashed with police and looted stores Friday in a fourth day of violence in France triggered by the deadly police shooting of a teen, piling more pressure on President Emmanuel Macron after he appealed to parents to keep children off the streets and blamed social media for furling unrest.
Despite repeated government appeals for calm and stiffer policing, Friday saw brazen daylight violence, too. An Apple store was looted in the eastern city of Strasbourg, where police fired tear gas, and the windows of a fast-food outlet were smashed in a Paris-area shopping mall, where officers repelled people trying to break into a shuttered store, authorities said.
The southern port city of Marseille, initially spared the violence that broke out first in the Paris region, was experiencing its second night of upheaval. Even before nightfall, young people hurled projectiles, set fires, and looted shops, police said. They made almost 90 arrests. On Friday evening, looters broke into a Marseille gun shop and made off with weapons, and a man was later arrested with a hunting rifle, police said. The previous night, two off-duty officers suffered serious injuries, including one who was stabbed, when they were set upon by about 20 people, police said.
Authorities in the city of Lyon reported rioters again setting fires and pelting police in the suburbs. In the city center, police made 31 arrests to stop the attempted looting of shops after an unauthorized protest against police violence that drew about 1,300 people Friday evening.
Violence was also erupting in some of France's territories overseas.
In French Guiana, a 54-year-old was killed by a stray bullet Thursday night when rioters fired at police in the capital, Cayenne, authorities said. On the small Indian Ocean island of Reunion, protesters set garbage bins ablaze, threw projectiles at police, and damaged cars and buildings, officials said. Some 150 officers were deployed there Friday night.
