The French government said rioting and looting had calmed as it kept up a heavy security deployment to try to quell the unrest that has exploded in the five days since a fatal police shooting of a teenager.“Quieter night thanks to the resolute action of the police,” interior minister Gérald Darmanin wrote on Twitter early on Sunday.
Some 719 arrests were made overnight compared with 1,311 on Friday, and the number of fires also more than halved, according to the ministry. About 50 of the 45,000 police officers deployed across France to quell the rioting were injured, far fewer than in previous nights.
Reinforcements included units specialising in urban violence. Armoured vehicles were deployed in Marseille and Lyon, where looting in the city centres was particularly bad. Police also blocked off the Champs élysées in Paris to try to prevent the luxury shops there from being ransacked.