Fires, looting and hundreds of arrests: Key events from the third night of violence in France

The overnight unrest followed a march on Thursday in memory of the 17-year-old, named Nahel, whose death has revived longstanding grievances about policing and racial profiling in France's low-income and multiethnic suburbs.

The Élysée announced Macron would cut short a trip to Brussels, where he was attending a European Union summit, to chair a crisis meeting on the violence – the second such emergency talks in as many days.

Around 40,000 police and gendarmes – along with elite Raid and GIGN units – were deployed in several cities overnight, with curfews issued in municipalities around Paris and bans on public gatherings instated in Lille and Tourcoing in the country's north.

Despite the massive security deployment, violence and damage were reported in multiple areas.