France sends 45,000 troops to suppress protests and unrest

France will deploy 45,000 security forces amid ongoing riots, Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said Friday, as the country deals with violent street protests in the wake of the shooting by French police of a 17-year-old boy.

This compares to the 40,000 mobilized the day before, where outrage over the police killing of a teenager during a police stop on Tuesday showed no sign of abating.

PARIS (Reuters) – A young man died on Friday after falling from a shop roof in northwest France during overnight protests triggered by the police shooting of a teenager, police said.

They added that the man, aged about 20, crashed onto the roof of a store that prosecutors said was not the target of any looting during the riots, which took place overnight from Thursday to Friday.

Hooligans ransack the Apple Store in Strasbourg

Young rioters went on a looting spree Friday in the French city of Strasbourg, targeting the Apple Store and other stores after a teenager was shot by a policeman near Paris.

Fearing an outbreak of vandalism, the police earlier closed access to a shopping center in the center of the eastern French city, where one of the entrances to the Apple Store is located.

But witnesses said that groups of young men gathered at another entrance to the store outside the mall and started vandalizing it.

“They smashed two of the store’s windows and we saw gangs of young men coming in and out, in and out, trying to steal display items,” Corentin Flink, who works in a nearby shop, told AFP.

Police used tear gas against the looters, he said, as regular shoppers took refuge inside the stores.

Several policemen arrived to block access to Apple Stores, and explosions were heard.

Employees at the nearby Galeries Lafayette department store lowered venetian blinds for protection, as did other stores in the neighborhood.

An AFP correspondent reported that many luxury goods stores had already emptied their storefronts, but other stores selling clothes or shoes were looted.

The rioters also destroyed a police car.

The Interior Ministry said 11 people had been arrested.

The entrance to the Strasbourg Opera House was also damaged, and Friday evening’s performance was cancelled.

The unrest erupted after the killing of 17-year-old Nahil on Tuesday in the western Paris suburb of Nanterre.