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French President Emmanuel Macron scrapped an official trip to Germany on Saturday after a fourth straight night of rioting and looting in defiance of a massive police deployment.
France's Interior Ministry announced that in the latest night of violence, 1311 people were arrested around the country, where 45,000 police officers fanned out in a so-far unsuccessful bid to restore order.
In the violence sparked by the teen's death on Tuesday, some 2400 persons have been arrested overall.
The interior minister, defending the mass arrests, said 45,000 police would again be deployed Saturday night, with an increase in the cities of Marseille and Lyon after a spike in violence there.
Despite an appeal to parents by Macron to keep their children at home, street clashes between young protesters and police raged on.
About 2500 fires were set and stores were ransacked, according to authorities.
As the number of arrests continued to mount, the government suggested the violence was beginning to lessen thanks to tougher security measures.
Still, the damage was widespread, from Paris to Marseille and Lyon and even far away, in the French territories overseas, where a 54-year-old died after being hit by a stray bullet in French Guiana.
France's national football team – including international star Kylian Mbappe, an idol to many young people in the disadvantaged neighbourhoods where the anger is rooted – pleaded for an end to the violence.
"Many of us are from working-class neighbourhoods, we too share this feeling of pain and sadness" over the killing of 17-year-old Nahel, the players said in a statement.
"Violence resolves nothing. … There are other peaceful and constructive ways to express yourself."
They said it's time for "mourning, dialogue and reconstruction" instead.
The fatal shooting of Nahel, whose last name has not been made public, stirred up long-simmering tensions between police and young people in housing projects who struggle with poverty, unemployment and racial discrimination.
The subsequent rioting is the worst France has seen in years and puts new pressure on Macron, who appealed to parents to keep children off the streets and blamed social media for fuelling violence.
Family and friends were holding a funeral gathering on Saturday for Nahel in his hometown of Nanterre.
Anger erupted in the Paris suburb after his death there Tuesday and quickly spread nationwide.
Early on Saturday, firefighters in Nanterre extinguished blazes set by protesters that left scorched remains of cars strewn across the streets.
In the neighbouring suburb of Colombes, protesters overturned garbage bins and used them for makeshift barricades.
Looters during the evening broke into a gun shop and made off with weapons in the Mediterranean port city of Marseille, police said.
Officers in Marseille arrested nearly 90 people as groups of protesters lit cars on fire and broke store windows to take what was inside.
Buildings and businesses were also vandalised in the eastern city of Lyon, where a third of the roughly 30 arrests made were for theft, police said.
Authorities reported fires in the streets after an unauthorised protest drew more than 1000 people earlier on Friday evening.
The Interior Ministry said 994 arrests were made during the night, with more than 2500 fires.
The night before, 917 people were arrested nationwide, 500 buildings targeted, 2000 vehicles burned and dozens of stores ransacked.
While the number of overnight arrests was the highest yet, there were fewer fires, cars burned and police stations attacked around France than the previous night, according to the Interior Ministry.
Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin claimed the violence was of "much less intensity".
Hundreds of police and firefighters have been injured, including 79 overnight, but authorities have not released injury tallies for protesters.
Nanterre Mayor Patrick Jarry said France needs to "push for changes" in disadvantaged neighbourhoods.
Despite repeated government appeals for calm and stiffer policing, Friday saw brazen daylight violence, too.
An Apple store was looted in the eastern city of Strasbourg, where police fired tear gas, and the windows of a fast-food outlet were smashed in a Paris-area shopping mall, where officers repelled people trying to break into a shuttered store, authorities said.
In the face of the escalating crisis that hundreds of arrests and massive police deployments have failed to quell, Macron held off on declaring a state of emergency, an option that was used in similar circumstances in 2005.
Instead, his government ratcheted up its law enforcement response, with 45,000 police deployed overnight. Some were called back from vacation.
Darmanin ordered a nationwide nighttime shutdown on Friday of all public buses and trams, which have been among rioters' targets.
He also said he warned social networks not to allow themselves to be used as channels for calls to violence.
"They were very cooperative," Darmanin said, adding that French authorities were providing the platforms with information in hopes of cooperation in identifying people inciting violence.
"We will pursue every person who uses these social networks to commit violent acts," he said.
Macron, too, zeroed in on social media platforms that have relayed dramatic images of vandalism and cars and buildings being torched.
Singling out Snapchat and TikTok, he said they were being used to organise unrest and served as conduits for copycat violence.
The violence comes just over a year before Paris and other French cities are due to host 10,500 Olympians and millions of visitors for the Summer Olympic Games.
Organisers said they are closely monitoring the situation as preparations for the Olympics continue.
The police officer accused of killing Nahel was handed a preliminary charge of voluntary homicide.
Preliminary charges mean investigating magistrates strongly suspect wrongdoing but need to investigate more before sending a case to trial.
Nanterre prosecutor Pascal Prache said his initial investigation led him to conclude that the officer's use of his weapon wasn't legally justified.
Nahel's mother, identified as Mounia M, told France 5 television that she was angry at the officer but not at the police in general.
"He saw a little Arab-looking kid, he wanted to take his life," she said.
"A police officer cannot take his gun and fire at our children, take our children's lives," she said. The family has roots in Algeria.
Race was a taboo topic for decades in France, which is officially committed to a doctrine of colourblind universalism. In the wake of Nahel's killing, French anti-racism activists renewed complaints about police behaviour.
Thirteen people who didn't comply with traffic stops were fatally shot by French police last year.
This year, another three people, including Nahel, died under similar circumstances.
The deaths have prompted demands for more accountability in France, which also saw racial justice protests after George Floyd's killing by police in Minnesota.
This week's protests echoed the three weeks of rioting in 2005 that followed the deaths of 15-year-old Bouna Traoré and 17-year-old Zyed Benna, who were electrocuted while hiding from police in a power substation in Clichy-sous-Bois.
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