FRANCE’S communists condemned the latest violent protests over the deadly police shooting of a 17-year-old boy as tensions continued to grow today.

President Emmanuel Macron urged the suspension of all bus and tram services amid ongoing rioting and looting sparked by the killing, which has shocked the nation.

He also called on parents to keep teenagers at home and proposed restrictions on social media to help quell the unrest.

Protesters erected barricades, lit fires and shot fireworks at police, who responded by using tear gas and water cannon into the early hours.

National police said that a total of 875 people had been detained overnight.

At least 200 officers were injured on a third night of rioting and looting.

Armoured police vehicles rammed the charred remains of cars that had been set ablaze in the north-western Paris suburb of Nanterre, where a police officer shot the teenager of Algerian descent identified only as Nahel. 

One of his relatives said: “There’s a feeling of injustice in many residents’ minds, whether it’s about school achievement, getting a job, access to culture, housing and other life issues.”

However, French Communist Party general secretary Fabien Roussel said that he condemned the violence absolutely.

“When you’re on the left, you defend public services, not their looting,” he added.

“What must be on the agenda is justice: justice for Nahel, justice for our neighbourhoods.”

Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin also denounced what he called a night of “rare violence.”

Many French towns and cities experienced violent incidents.

In Paris, the police station in the city’s 12th arrondissement was attacked, while some shops were looted along Rue de Rivoli, near the Louvre museum and at the Forum des Halles in the centre of the capital.

Anti-racism activists renewed their complaints about police behaviour.

“We have to go beyond saying that things need to calm down,” said Dominique Sopo, head of campaign group SOS Racisme. 

“The issue here is how do we make it so that we have a police force that when they see blacks and Arabs, they don’t tend to shout at them, use racist terms against them and, in some cases, shoot them in the head.”

Nahel’s mother, identified only as Mounia M, told France 5 television that she is angry with the officer who killed her only child, but not with the police in general. 

Nonetheless, she called for justice to be “very firm.”