PARIS (AP) — 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 protesting rising living costs and poor conditions in schools.
President Emmanuel Macron was due to hold an emergency meeting with senior government officials on Sunday before addressing the nation at 8 p.m., his office said.
Masked groups set fires and attacked public buildings, including city halls, in several cities on Saturday, authorities said. In the central city of Limoges, flames engulfed the 19th-century City Hall, causing its roof to collapse and nearly destroying the building.
Hundreds of protesters gathered again Sunday at the Place de la République in Paris amid a heavy police presence. Officers used tear gas as tensions flared sporadically.
“The right to protest is a fundamental right. Deliberately and collectively sowing disorder through violence is not,” Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez wrote on X, citing the looting of hundreds of businesses in cities including Paris, Marseille, Lyon and Bordeaux.
About 550,000 people took part in protests across France, according to authorities, while organizers put the figure at about 800,000. Demonstrators answered calls from a labor union, student organizations and activists hoping to revive the “yellow vest” movement, which emerged in 2018 to protest social injustice.
Mass protests in France are often marred by violence on the fringes of otherwise peaceful marches, leading to clashes with police. The arrest tally reported Sunday approached the nearly 2,000 recorded nationwide during a single day of yellow vest protests in December 2018.
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.
Dislodged cobblestones, shattered storefronts and broken glass littered the area around Paris’ Place de la République on Sunday. Looting and damage were also reported in other tourist and shopping districts.
Paris police said 855 people were arrested in the capital region. The city’s prosecutor’s office said 557 remained in police custody.
“I am actually stunned by the level of destruction and violence that was expressed,” said government employee Marie Peyreigne, 57, wondering what had led to the mayhem.
Parisians inspecting the damage photographed the partially dismantled base of the square’s central monument, a statue of Marianne, a symbol of France.
Jean Foissy, 74, said he had wanted to join the protest but encountered “a wall of riot police and fires everywhere” and returned home.
“I was very scared,” he said. “I’ve been a Parisian since I was born, so when I got here, it almost made me want to cry because I find it so bad, it hurts me.”
Margaux Eude, 26, said she supported the protest movement but “didn’t think it would escalate like this.”
“It’s the troublemakers who came, and it breaks my heart because it delegitimizes the movement,” she said.
Political leaders across the spectrum sought to parlay the fallout of Saturday’s riots into political capital, looking ahead to next spring’s presidential election.
Far-right leader and presidential hopeful Marine Le Pen lashed out at far-left rival Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who joined the Paris march. “Looting, ransacking, destroying and attacking law enforcement: Rioters have again spoiled the Oct. 17 demonstrations,” Le Pen wrote on X.
Her running mate, Jordan Bardella, said on X that “if the silent majority of French decide it, we will reestablish order for the long term.”
Mélenchon, for his part, accused Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu of “playing with fire,” alleging that “by banking on degradation, you have only succeeded in uniting all youths and workers’ unions.”
Mélenchon insisted that “my message is clear: those who share our fight have no business in looting or destruction.”
U.S. President Donald Trump posted “France is burning!” on his Truth Social platform, apparently linking the unrest to “the immigration of people from an entirely different world.”
“Close your Borders and take control, before it is too late!” he wrote.
French authorities and police have not linked immigrants to the rioting and have repeatedly attributed some of the violence to “radical far-left groups” and other people who joined to loot.
“The scale of the damage is considerable and unprecedented,” Paris Mayor Emmanuel Grégoire wrote in an open letter. “Paris is a city of freedoms, debate and demonstrations. It must remain so. But it must also be a city where everyone can work and run a business safely.”
Police said groups of hundreds of people formed unauthorized 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 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.
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