'Next hours will be decisive': 45,000 police deployed as unrest spreads across France

France has suspended all bus and tram services on Friday night - while deploying 45,000 officers across the country - amid ongoing riots over a police shooting.

Violent protests are spreading throughout France after a 17-year-old, named in reports as Nahel M, was shot by police during a traffic stop in the Paris suburb of Nanterre on Tuesday.

In the aftermath, people have taken to the streets on three consecutive nights to protest, setting cars alight and throwing stones and fireworks.

More outbreaks of violence were reported across the country on Friday night.

Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin earlier told TF1 television that 45,000 extra police officers, which will include paramilitary gendarmes, would be deployed across France on Friday - 5,000 more than the previous night.

In a message to fire and police forces, he said: "The next hours will be decisive and I know I can count on your flawless efforts".

On Friday night, clashes were reported in several cities, including the city of Lyon in the southeast.

In Marseille, police said looters broke into a shop selling guns and ran off with several hunting rifles. One person was arrested nearby with one of the weapons, officers said.

By 10pm, 80 people had been arrested in the city, police said.

There was also looting reported earlier in Strasbourg in broad daylight, including from an Apple store and several supermarkets.

In central Paris, police removed a group of protesters from the Place de la Concorde, while fires were started in other parts of the capital.

French football superstar Kylian Mbappe, who previously described Nahel's death as an "unacceptable situation", took to Twitter to appeal for calm.

He wrote: "Violence solves nothing... There are other peaceful and constructive ways to express yourself. It is in this that our energies and our thoughts must be concentrated.

"The time of violence must end to give way to that of mourning, dialogue and reconstruction."

Police said 917 arrests were made during clashes overnight on Thursday and into Friday morning.

Officials said the average age of those detained was 17 - with some as young as 13.

Some key locations where the rioting has taken place

Meanwhile, a young man has died after he fell from the roof of a supermarket in the city of Rouen during rioting, local authorities said.

A police source claimed the man plunged from the building, in the suburb of Petit-Quevilly in the Bruyeres shopping centre, while it was being looted overnight on Thursday.

President Emmanuel Macron has urged parents to keep teenagers at home to limit potential rioting in the coming days.

He also blamed social media for fuelling copycat violence and said it had played a "significant role in the events of the past few days".

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Mr Macron has also been urged to get a grip on the crisis after going to an Elton John concert on Wednesday, the day after the shooting.

"While France was on fire, Macron was not at the side of his minister of the interior or the police, but he preferred to applaud Elton John," said Thierry Mariani, an MEP for National Rally.

Youths 'intoxicated by video games'

Mr Macron said a third of the individuals arrested on Thursday were "young people, sometimes very young", and that "it's the parents' responsibility" to keep their children at home.

"We sometimes have the feeling that some of them are living in the streets [of] the video games that have intoxicated them," he said of rioters.

On Friday, following a second crisis meeting, Mr Darmanin issued an order to stop buses and tram services at night.

When asked on French TV if the government might declare a state of emergency, the minister said: "Quite simply, we're not ruling out any hypothesis and we'll see after tonight what the President of the Republic chooses."

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Authorities in the Paris region had already announced a transport shutdown to protect staff and passengers. The city's Metro system will also shut an hour earlier this weekend following a request from local police.

Concerts by Canadian-born French pop star Mylène Farmer - scheduled to have been held at Paris' Stade de France stadium on Friday and Saturday night - have been cancelled due to the riots, according to an official from the Seine-Saint-Denis district.

On Thursday, 40,000 police officers were deployed across France - nearly four times the number mobilised on Wednesday.

'He didn't want to kill him'

However, there were few signs that appeals from the government to de-escalate the situation are having any effect.

In Nanterre, where the police shooting took place, protesters torched cars, barricaded streets and hurled projectiles at police following a vigil.

Armoured police vehicles rammed through the charred remains of cars that had been flipped and set ablaze in the Paris suburb.

National police said on Thursday night that officers also faced new clashes in other areas of the country - in Marseille, Lyon, Pau, Toulouse and Lille - including protesters starting fires and setting off fireworks.

Meanwhile, the police officer who shot and killed the teenager asked the family of the boy for forgiveness.

His lawyer Laurent-Franck Lienard told BFMTV: "The first words he pronounced were to say sorry and the last words he said were to say sorry to the family.

"He is devastated, he doesn't get up in the morning to kill people. He didn't want to kill him."

Mr Lienard added that his client's detention was being used to try to calm rioters.

The teenager's burial is scheduled for Saturday, according to Nanterre Mayor Patrick Jarry, who said the country needs to "push for changes" in disadvantaged neighbourhoods.

"There's a feeling of injustice in many residents' minds, whether it's about school achievement, getting a job, access to culture, housing and other life issues," he said.

"I believe we are in that moment when we need to face the urgency [of the situation]."