New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said that the city will be under a curfew from 8 pm to 5 am the next morning till Sunday to curb criminal acts emerging from protests over the death of black man George Floyd.

Monday’s curfew, the first in the city since 1943, started at 11 pm and did not stop looters from breaking into stores in Manhattan as soon as night fell, according to the reports.

Over 200 people had been arrested before the curfew took effect on Monday night, and the whole night saw more than 700 arrests made, most of whom were youths, according to the New York City Police Department (NYPD).

The NYPD said that one officer was seriously injured by a hit-and-run driver in the borough of the Bronx Monday night, while another was hit by a car when trying to stop a burglary in Manhattan.

During a daily briefing, de Blasio said, “We saw vicious attacks on police officers. That is wholly unacceptable”.

“Anyone who attacks a police officer attacks us all”, he added.

New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo said he was “disappointed and outraged” by what happened Monday night, saying the criminal activity hurt everyone.

He criticized the city’s preparedness for Monday night’s chaos, saying the mayor underestimated the scope and the duration of the problem.

Tens of thousands of protesters took to the streets from Seattle to New York, demanding tougher murder charges and more arrests over the death of George Floyd, an unarmed black man, who was pinned to the ground by the knee of a white officer in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

In Los Angeles, officers fired rubber bullets and swung batons during a testy standoff with demonstrators who set fire to a police car.

Police and protesters clashed in numerous cities including Chicago and New York, with officers responding to projectiles with pepper spray while shop windows were smashed in Philadelphia.

Most of the shops in downtown Manhattan have had plywood installed over their windows and entrances, and workers were boarding up more shops on Tuesday afternoon, bracing for another potentially violent night.

So far, the city has arrested nearly 2,000 people since the protest erupted Thursday. More than 50 police officers have been injured, according to the NYPD.

On Tuesday, two people were killed during unrest in Chicago’s suburb of Cicero as protests continued over the death of African-American man.

All four police officers involved in the incident have been fired, and Chauvin has been charged with third-degree murder and manslaughter.

On Friday night, as hundreds of protesters, raged by the death of George Floyd, gathered outside the White House, US President Donald Trump was briefly taken to an underground bunker.

The unrest has been the most widespread in the United States since 1968, when cities went up in flames over the slaying of civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr, and rekindled memories of 1992 riots in Los Angeles after police were acquitted in the brutal beating of black motorist Rodney King.