Police and protesters clashed violently in Paris and other French cities yesterday on the sidelines of nationwide marches against soaring inflation, with one demonstrator’s hand blown off, multiple blazes set and looters breaking into dozens of stores to strip them bare.
The widespread unrest follows weeks of student protests and deepens political uncertainty in France as it readies for elections in six months’ time to replace President Emmanuel Macron.
Macron and his government were criticised by many of the demonstrators, who numbered 500,000 across the country, according to the CGT union. Authorities did not immediately give their estimate of numbers.
Police used tear gas and water cannon against masked protesters in Paris and other cities who were throwing projectiles and aiming fireworks. Several parked cars were torched in the capital, and more than 130 arrests made.
In the southern city of Saint-Etienne, a male protester had his hand blown off by a police crowd-control grenade, a police source told AFP. His maiming came after a 15-year-old lost his hand October 5 to a police stun grenade during another protest in the city of Lens.
In Lyon, protesters set ablaze a tourist office in the city centre, and smashed their way into town halls in the cities of Marseille and Lille, where they vandalised the premises before leaving.
Dozens of shops were looted, including many in Marseille, among them a Hermes boutique, an Apple store in Lille, several shops in Nice and at least one mobile phone outlet in Paris, AFP journalists saw.
A crowd of more than 300 protesters tried to move up Paris’s Champs-Elysees, home to flagship luxury stores. As police firing tear gas blocked their way, they yelled "All cops are bastards”.
The looting and confrontations with police were being carried out by masked youths on the sidelines of marches that were largely peaceful and which attracted people of all ages, including families with children.
Paris mayor Emmanuel Gregoire stressed that "the overwhelming majority of demonstrators” wanted to "march calmly”, but "acts of vandalism” were tarnishing their protest.
In Paris, tens of thousands marched across the east and north of the city in one major march, some shouting "Everyone hates the police” and "Macron, resign”.
Demonstrators’ hostility towards the police had sharpened over the course of the preceding student protests, when several teens were maimed and thousands were arrested.
France’s Yellow Vest movement, which eight years ago staged street protests against Macron’s government over planned fuel tax hikes, had called for the yesterday’s "yellow and youth” demonstrations.
The principal grievance was the cost of living — pushed up in part by the war in the Middle East — that has helped send inflation soaring in Europe as elsewhere.
But there were other issues too.
Opposition politicians vying to succeed Macron have seized upon the protests.
Far-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen, who has sided with the police, said on X: "Looting, pillaging, attacking police — rioters have once again sullied the October 17 demonstrations over the cost of living.”
She claimed that the protesters’ demands had been "hijacked by the far-left”.
Her far-left rival Jean-Luc Melenchon, insisted early Saturday that "everything is passing off peacefully”, while accusing television news of "flooding us with images of violence in dozens of cities”.
Several protesters sought to draw parallels with the French Revolution of 1789.
"It’s the Revolution — we’re taking the Bastille!” some shouted in Marseille during the forced entry of the mayor’s offices.
In the western city of La Rochelle, marchers streamed behind a placard reading: "Revolution or death.”
And in the southern city of Montpellier, a giant blue sign reading "The people will win” was unfurled above a central square.
"The government is trembling and it’s right to tremble because when the French people are angry, they never let up,” Ryad Rani, the head of the LSU high school student representative body, told journalists in Paris.