France Unrest: Security Tightened As More Violent Protests May Erupt, 170 Cops Injured | 10 Points

As protests over killing of a teenager turned violent in France’s Paris, the police has beefed up security and deployed around 40,000 personnel in view of the situation.

In Paris alone, at least 5,000 additional police officers have been deployed

France’s government said it would have a “zero-tolerance” approach in areas where buildings and vehicles were torched by the protestors, news agency AP reported.

This comes after a 17-year-old delivery driver, identified as Nahel, was shot and killed by a police officer Tuesday in the Paris suburb of Nanterre. The death has unleashed tensions between angry residents setting barricades on fire and police firing tear gas.

The protests flared-up in no time, and became rioting that has now injured at least 170 police officers, and has damaged nearly 100 public buildings.

Here are the latest updates on the Paris violence 

1. French President Emmanuel Macron held an emergency security meeting on Thursday about the violence and said “these acts are totally unjustifiable.”
2. Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said that “policing will be more than quadrupled — from 9,000 officers to 40,000. In the Paris region alone, the number of officers deployed will more than double to 5,000.” “The professionals of disorder must go home…. The state’s response will be extremely firm,” Darmanin said.
3. Apart from this all, bus and tram services will shut down early on Thursday evening, at 9 pm, to safeguard transportation workers and passengers from the ongoing violence, head of the Paris region said.
4. The police officer who killed the teenager has been handed a preliminary charge of voluntary homicide, French prosecutors said.
5. The killing was also captured on video and has shocked the country and stirred up long-simmering tensions between police and young people, especially in housing projects and other disadvantaged neighborhoods, AP said.
6. The demonstartion has now spread to other towns, and despite beefed-up police presence, violence resumed on Thursday with protestors using fireworks, and throwing stones at police.
7. At several places, the protestors also set blazes, and the police has been replying to the violence with repeated usage of tear gas.
8. Nahel’s mother called for a silent march on Thursday that drew a large crowd to the square where he was killed.
9. Schools, police stations, town halls and other public buildings were damaged from Toulouse in the south to Lille in the north — with most of the damage in the Paris suburbs, according to a spokesperson for the national police.
10. Till now, at least 170 police officers have been injured and at least 90 public buildings were vandalized. We don’t know the number of protestors injured till now.

With agency inputs

Original news source