Paris: Police arrested at least 1,800 people across France after violent groups clashed with officers and looted shops during nationwide demonstrations that drew hundreds of thousands of people who denounced rising living costs and poor conditions in schools.
Authorities said masked groups on Saturday set fires and attacked public buildings, including city halls, in several cities.
In Limoges, a city in central France, flames engulfed the 19th-century City Hall, causing its roof to collapse. Haute-Vienne prefect Maurice Barate told LCI television that the fire was deliberately set and nearly destroyed the building. The fire was under control on Sunday.
French President Emmanuel Macron will hold an emergency meeting with top government officials on Sunday afternoon before addressing the nation at 8 p.m., according to his office.
“The right to protest is a fundamental right. Deliberately and collectively sowing disorder through violence is not,” Interior Minister Laurent Nunez wrote on X, pointing to the looting of hundreds of businesses in Paris, Marseille, Lyon, Bordeaux, Rennes, Strasbourg, Grenoble, Nice, Limoges and other cities.
Nunez and Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu attributed some of the violence to “radical far-left groups” and said others later joined to loot.
Paris police said on Sunday that 855 people were arrested in the French capital region alone. About 550,000 people took part in protests across France, according to authorities, while organisers counted about 800,000. More than 500 police officers, gendarmes and firefighters were injured, Nunez said.
One person died of a heart attack, Paris police said in a statement, without providing details. The Paris prosecutor's office said it was investigating.
Around Paris' Place de la Republique on Sunday morning, dislodged cobblestones, shattered storefronts and broken glass marked the aftermath of the events. Looting and damage were reported around the square and in some other tourist and shopping areas in the city centre.
Police said groups numbering from several hundred to more than 1,000 people formed unauthorised marches across central Paris on Saturday. “By late afternoon, a new phase began with the arrival of large numbers of people whose sole aim was to steal and loot, taking advantage of the unrest,” police said.
The mayors of Paris, Marseille and Lyon, the country's three largest cities, requested a meeting with the prime minister in the coming days “given the extent of the damage and the seriousness of the situation”.
In the southern port city of Marseille, some protesters briefly forced their way into the lobby of City Hall, and a group of people wearing hoods and masks damaged a police station. In Lyon, a fire broke out inside a tourist office.
