Nearly 1,000 people have been arrested in a new day of mass protests in France, Interior Minister Laurent Nunes announced. According to him, the number of detainees will increase. He also reported two serious injuries - in Toulouse and Clermont-Ferrand.
Demonstrations against high living costs and poor school conditions began mostly peacefully, but later clashes broke out in several cities. In Paris, police used tear gas and water cannons after groups of masked protesters began building barricades and throwing objects at law enforcement officers.
Nunes said that “several thousand radical activists“ gathered at the end of the march in the capital, with about 500 of them identified as rioters. Car dealership windows were also attacked during the demonstration.
Barricades and tear gas in several cities
In Marseille, protesters set fire to garbage cans and used metal sheets to block streets. A police car drove through a burning barricade in the southern port city.
In Bordeaux, people wearing dark clothes and covering their faces were removing boards from a building to build a new barricade. In Lyon, police dispersed a group with tear gas after the area was declared off-limits to demonstrations.
„There were about 150 of us, mostly schoolchildren and university students. Then the tear gas came almost immediately. "There was almost nothing to see on the streets," said a protester in Lyon.Around 410,000 people took part in the protests, according to the French Interior Ministry. Trade unions put the figure higher at around 800,000. Some 70,000 police were deployed to guard the demonstrations.
Less destruction compared to the previous weekend
The authorities said they had avoided a repeat of the scale of looting and destruction from the previous weekend. About 550,000 people took to the streets, and the ensuing riots led to more than 2,500 arrests. More than 2,000 shops and other businesses were affected.
In Orleans, around 13,000 people took part in a rally against the far-right party “National Rally“. The demonstration passed without reports of serious clashes.
Sources: bbc.co.uk