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Defiant gatherings have been held outside town halls across France following a wave of rioting triggered by the fatal police shooting of a teenager of north African descent.
Police made fewer than 160 arrests early on Monday, offering some relief for President Emmanuel Macron in his fight to reimpose order, just months after rolling protests over an unpopular pension reform and a year out from hosting the Olympics.
The death of Nahel, a 17-year-old with Algerian and Moroccan parents, has tapped a deep vein of anti-police resentment in the poor and racially mixed suburbs of major French cities - known as banlieues -where Muslim communities of north African descent in particular have long accused police of racial profiling and violent tactics.
Since he was shot on Tuesday last week, rioters have torched cars, looted stores and targeted town halls, state schools and state-owned properties. Paris suburbs and Marseille in the south have been flashpoints.
What started as an uprising in the banlieues' high-rise estates morphed into a broader outpouring of hate and anger toward the state and opportunistic violence.
The unrest, though, has not prompted the kind of government soul-searching on race which followed turmoil over similar incidents in other Western countries, such as Black Lives Matter protests in the United States or race riots at times in Britain.
Instead, the French government points to underprivilege in low-income urban neighbourhoods and juvenile delinquency, a reflection of the state's belief that citizens are united under a single French identity, regardless of race or ethnicity.
Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin took aim at families who had allowed children to wreak havoc on the streets, saying the average of those arrested was 17 with some as young as 12.
"It's not up to the national police or the gendarmerie or the mayor or the state to solve the problem of a 12-year-old setting fire to a school. It's a question of parental authority," Darmanin said during a visit to Reims.
Some 45,000 police would be deployed for a fourth consecutive night, he said, to try to keep a lid on unrest which has seen more than 5600 cars torched, 1000 private properties burned down or damaged and 250 police stations attacked.
Relatives of Nahel have urged calm. His grandmother said on Sunday the rioters were using his death as an excuse to cause mayhem: "We don't want them to smash things up," she told BFM TV. "Nahel is dead, that's all there is."
A crowdfunding campaign launched by a far-right polemicist for the police officer who fired the shot at the teenager had raised more than €1 million ($NZ1.77 million) by Monday.
Meeting mayors
In the town of Persan south of Paris, where rioters smashed the town hall's windows and damaged its facade in an arson attack, dozens of local residents denounced the unrest - one of scores of similar "citizens' gatherings" nationwide on Monday.
"Let these wrongdoers hear it and let them know that hatred will never prevail," Mayor Valentin Ratieuville told them.
Some bystanders engaged in animated debate over who was to blame for the unrest, revealing the divisions over identity that run deep through French society.
"We should cut everything, family allowances, everything related to welfare subsidies. Come on! If they are not happy, they return home to their country," one pensioner who gave his name as Alain said.
"Yes, sir, but let me tell you something. They might have foreign origins, foreign ancestors, but these kids are French," responded Fatma, her head covered in an Islamic headscarf.
In mid-April, Macron gave himself 100 days to bring reconciliation and unity to a divided country after rolling strikes and sometimes-violent protests over his raising of the retirement age, which he had promised in his election campaign.
Macron postponed a state visit to Germany to deal with the crisis. He was due to meet the leaders of parliament on Monday and more than 220 mayors of towns and cities that have been affected by riots on Tuesday.
Vincent Jeanbrun, the mayor of the Paris suburb of L'Hay-les-Roses, whose home was attacked while his wife Melanie and children were asleep inside on Saturday, on Monday described the situation as "a real nightmare".
"I myself grew up in L'Hay-les-Roses in these large housing blocks," Jeanbrun, a member of the centre-right Les Republicains party, told BFM TV. "Our life was modest, we didn't have much, but we wanted to overcome it, we had hope that we would make it with hard work."
The aggressors drove their vehicle at the suburban house but were halted by a low wall ringing the property's outdoor terrace, the local public prosecutor said. They then torched their vehicle.
As Jeanbrun's wife and children, aged 5 and 7, took flight through the back yard, they were targeted with fireworks. Jeanbrun told Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne his wife had had surgery to a broken leg and faced a three-month rehabilitation.
Teen known to police
In Nanterre, on the western outskirts of Paris, flowers and other tributes mark the spot where Nahel was shot almost a week ago. Graffiti calls for revenge.
Nahel was known to police for previous incidents in which he failed to comply with traffic stops, the local prosecutor Pascal Prache said.
Prache said police spotted a Mercedes driving in a bus lane at 7.55am in the district of Nanterre on the western outskirts of Paris. Police attempted to pull him over at a red light using sirens and lights, the prosecutor added. But Nahel disobeyed and committed several traffic offences, endangering the lives of a pedestrian and a cyclist.
The officers caught up with the Mercedes in a traffic jam. Both officers at one point used guns to deter him from starting off again and asked him to turn off the ignition, the prosecutor said. When the car made to get away, one officer fired at close range through the driver's window.
The officer involved has acknowledged firing a lethal shot, telling investigators he wanted to prevent another chase, fearing he or another person would be hurt. His lawyer Laurent-Franck Lienard has said he did not intend to kill the teenager.
Nahel died from a single shot through his left arm and chest. Police and paramedics tried to resuscitate him but he was declared dead at 9.15am.