LONDON – France is experiencing its most serious wave of street rioting in decades as large numbers of mainly young men rampage through the country’s main cities, looting shops in protest against the police killing of a teenager in a suburb of Paris, the capital, on Tuesday.

An average of 45,000 police officers are deployed each night, backed by light armoured vehicles and special crack police units, to quell the violence, which has already resulted in the death of another man, who fell from a supermarket roof during an apparent burglary attempt.