France: nearly 1,000 arrested as clashes follow another day of mass cost-of-living protests
Around 410,000 people marched across France on Saturday, according to the interior ministry, while the CGT union put the figure at 800,000. The marches were largely peaceful, but clashes broke out late in the day in Paris, Marseille, Bordeaux and other cities. Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez said nearly 1,000 people had been arrested, a number he expected to rise.
France saw a second Saturday of mass protests over the cost of living and public services on 24 October. The interior ministry estimated that 410,000 people took part nationwide, 110,000 of them in Paris. The CGT, one of the unions that organised the marches, claimed 800,000 across the country and 250,000 in the capital, AFP and franceinfo reported. Last weekend's protests drew about 550,000 people, according to official figures.
Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez said at a 19:30 press briefing that the marches themselves had "gone well" and that nearly 1,000 people had been arrested, a provisional figure he said would "increase considerably". At the same point on 17 October, he said, police had made 385 arrests. Two people were seriously injured, one in Toulouse and one in Clermont-Ferrand, the minister said.
Clashes broke out in Paris at the end of a march from Porte d'Italie to Porte de Vincennes, where masked protesters threw objects and fireworks at officers, who responded with tear gas, sound grenades and water cannon, the BBC and AP reported. In Marseille, bins were set on fire and metal sheets used to build barricades; in Bordeaux, people in dark clothing tore boards off a building to block a street. Police also fired tear gas in Lyon and Nantes, and AFP reported clashes in Lille, Montpellier and Toulouse.
Nuñez blamed groups of "radical" far-left activists dressed in black who broke away from the marches, and said police faced "an extremely high level of violence". He said, however, that there had been no attacks on public buildings such as town halls and police stations this time, and only a limited number of shops were damaged or looted, compared with about 300 looted at the same point last week. Some 70,000 police officers and gendarmes were deployed, and only marches organised by recognised trade unions were allowed, the BBC said.
Last Saturday's demonstrations against rising fuel prices and living costs ended in some of the worst disorder in modern France, with more than 2,500 arrests, about 1,000 police officers injured and more than 2,000 businesses affected, according to the BBC. The protests come six months before France's presidential election.