Police made fewer than 160 arrests overnight, 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, 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.
The unrest, though, has not prompted the kind of government soul-searching on race which followed unrest 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, 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.
His ministry said 157 people were arrested overnight, down from over 700 arrests the night before and over 1,300 on Friday night. Three police officers were injured, while 300 vehicles were damaged by fire, it added.
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."
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