Mourners bury slain teen in France as 45,000 police are deployed to quell 5th night of riots

NANTERRE, France — Hushed and visibly anguished, hundreds of mourners from France’s Islamic community formed a solemn procession from a mosque to a hillside cemetery on Saturday to bury a 17-year-old whose killing by police has triggered days of rioting and looting across the nation.

Underscoring the gravity of the crisis, President Emmanuel Macron scrapped an official trip to Germany after nights of unrest across France. Officials said they were again deploying 45,000 police to the streets nationwide in an effort to head off a fifth night of violence.

Some 2,400 people have been arrested overall since the teen’s death on Tuesday. Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin tweeted late Saturday that 200 riot police would be mobilized in the port city of Marseille, where TV showed footage of tear gas and officers in the streets as night fell. Police said 29 people were arrested there, and at least 37 were arrested in Paris near the Champs-Elysées, where police vans were seen parked outside luxury stores in one of the capital’s most high-profile areas.

Near the Arc de Triomphe on Saturday night, hundreds of police with batons and shields stood restlessly along the Champs-Elysées, several in front of the shuttered Cartier boutique. Posts on social media called for protests on the grand boulevard but the police presence appeared to discourage any large gatherings.

At a hilltop cemetery in Nanterre, the Paris suburb where the teen identified as Nahel was killed, hundreds stood along the road to pay tribute as mourners carried his white casket from a mosque to the burial site. Some of the men carried folded prayer rugs.

“Men first,” an official told dozens of women waiting to enter the cemetery.

But Nahel’s mother, dressed in white, walked inside to applause and headed toward the grave. Many of the men were young and Arab or Black, coming to mourn a boy who could have been them.

Inside the cemetery gate, the casket was lifted above the crowd and carried toward the grave. The men followed, some holding little boys by the hand. As they left, some wiped their eyes. Police were nowhere to be seen.

The unrest was taking a toll on Macron’s diplomatic profile.

German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier’s office said Macron phoned Saturday to request a postponement of what would have been the first state visit by a French president to Germany in 23 years.