Marseille imposes night curfew for minors after 500 businesses hit in riots

Marseille is imposing an overnight curfew for minors in parts of the city from Tuesday evening, after a weekend of rioting left more than 500 businesses damaged, most of them looted, local business leaders said.

Thunder and lightning swept across the southern French port city after the chaos of the weekend, lighting up the cracked windows and smashed doors of the businesses hit as Marseille, France's second largest city, experienced some of the worst unrest of the wave of disorder that swept the whole country on Saturday.

A police union official described the weekend as an "apocalyptic" ordeal for colleagues. He said 118 officers were injured, more than a tenth of the force deployed in the city.

Police have made 101 arrests in the port city so far, a quarter of them minors, according to the union official. Authorities banned demonstrations and gatherings in the city for eight hours on Monday in an attempt to prevent a third consecutive day of unrest.

By Monday, it was police rather than protesters who dominated the streets of central Marseille. The biggest crowd reported that day was a group of tourists walking along the waterfront in heavy rain, a sign the enforced calm was holding, at least for the moment.

A separate overnight curfew for minors in parts of Paris, which took effect on Monday, has also been extended, as authorities in both of France's two largest cities try to prevent fresh unrest from taking hold.

Interior minister Laurent Nuñez visited Marseille on Monday evening and promised the city's mayor more law enforcement to supervise the next demonstration, which is already planned for Saturday.