FRENCH communists called for “calm” as the government vowed to restore order today after two nights of violence triggered by the deadly police shooting of a 17-year-old.

Authorities announced today that it was set to deploy tens of thousands more officers and crack down on neighbourhoods where buildings and vehicles were torched.

Ministers fanned out to areas scarred by the sudden flare-up of rioting, appealing for calm but also warning that the violence that injured scores of police and damaged nearly 100 public buildings wouldn’t be allowed to continue. 

After a morning crisis meeting, Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said policing will be more than quadrupled — from 9,000 officers to 40,000. 

In the Paris region alone, the number of officers deployed will more than double to 5,000.

Mr Darmanin said: “The state’s response will be extremely firm.”

The police officer who fired the fatal shot in the Paris suburb of Nanterre will be investigated for voluntary homicide after an initial investigation led local prosecutor Pascal Prache to conclude that “the conditions for the legal use of the weapon were not met.”

The killing of the teen, identified only as Nahel M, came during a traffic stop on Tuesday. 

The incident captured on video shocked the country and stirred up long-simmering tensions between police and young people in housing projects and other disadvantaged neighbourhoods across the country.

Despite a beefed-up police presence on Wednesday night, violence resumed after dusk with protesters launching fireworks and hurling stones at police in Nanterre, who fired repeated volleys of tear gas.

As demonstrations spread to other towns, police and firefighters struggled to contain protesters and extinguish numerous blazes. 

Schools, police stations, town halls and other public buildings were damaged from Toulouse in the south to Lille in the north with most of the damage in the Paris suburbs, according to a spokesperson for the national police.

French Communist Party general secretary Fabien Roussel called for “justice for Nahel.”

Mr Roussel said: “I call for calm and a peaceful mobilisation so that truth and justice be done on the death of Nahel and the responsibility of the police.

“Faced with the terrible images of death, the anger is legitimate. Violence does nothing to help our fight for truth and justice.”

French President Emmanuel Macron held an emergency security meeting today about the violence.

“These acts are totally unjustifiable,” Mr Macron said at the beginning of the meeting, which aimed at securing hot spots and planning for the coming days “so full peace can return.”