While the ban on public gatherings in Marseille and partial overnight curfews in other French cities have brought some temporary calm, more demonstrations are planned for the weekend.
At a smashed out tram stop, 79-year-old grandmother Chantal Bellanger said she had been “worried – but then, I’ve been worried for a long time”.
“We can clearly see that France has lost its grip on many things. Public services, hospitals, education is in a horrible state, the peripheral neighbourhoods are dilapidated, they are abandoned.”
She said she used to work in these deprived northern suburbs, where poverty and crime rates are very high, and feared a whole lost generation was criminalising itself through anger and despair.
“It tugs at your heartstrings,” she said.
“To see children whose actions are going to place them completely outside of society. It’s painful to watch.”
Additional reporting by Paul Pradier and Pol Reygaerts