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Unrest in France appeared to have subsided during a fifth night of protests on Saturday, the country’s interior minister said after the large scale deployment of security forces throughout the country.
Gérald Darmanin said on Twitter that it had been a “calmer night thanks to the resolute action” of police.
There had been 427 arrests since the start of Saturday evening, he wrote early on Sunday.
Some 45,000 police were deployed throughout the country after four previous nights of rioting set off by the shooting of a teenager of North African descent. Specialised elite units, armoured vehicles and helicopters were also put in place in Paris, Lyon and Marseille.
The Mediterranean city was the scene of the biggest disturbances of the night, with police firing tear gas and battling with youths in the city centre.
The 17-year-old shot by police, identified by authorities only as Nahel, was buried in a private funeral in the Paris suburb of Nanterre on Saturday.
His killing on Tuesday stoked a wave of anger in the Paris suburb where he lived, which spread to cities and towns across France.
It exacerbated tensions between the police and young people in low-income areas that are home to minorities and immigrants, who face racial profiling by police and discrimination in housing and job opportunities, according to official studies.
The unrest poses a big challenge for French president Emmanuel Macron, who has called for calm while also describing the shooting as “inexplicable and inexcusable”. He had been seeking to move on from months of protests over his unpopular pensions reform by relaunching legislative priorities and being more active on the diplomatic front.
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The government has stopped short of declaring a state of emergency that would give regional prefects broader powers to clamp down on violence. Instead it has declared local curfews and cancelled concerts and public events.
In a sign of how seriously the government is taking the demonstrations, Macron cancelled a state visit to Germany that was to begin on Sunday because he “wants to stay in France in the coming days”, the Elysée palace said on Saturday.
