French Police Deploy 70,000 Officers to Contain 410,000 Protesters

Nearly 1,000 people were arrested in France on Saturday as hundreds of thousands took to the streets in a new wave of nationwide protests, according to Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez. The ministry stated the final arrest count would continue to rise as officers completed their reports. Two individuals suffered serious injuries during the demonstrations, one in Toulouse and the other in Clermont-Ferrand.

Authorities estimated that 410,000 people participated in the marches, a figure unions contested by claiming the turnout was closer to 800,000. To manage the crowds, police deployed approximately 70,000 officers across the country. This massive mobilization was a direct response to the disorder of the previous weekend, which saw widespread looting and fires. Restrictions were placed on movement in several cities to prevent a recurrence of that chaos.

In Paris, the protest began as a peaceful march from the Porte d'Italie towards the Porte de Vincennes. Trouble emerged as the group reached its destination. Police brought in an elite unit typically used for counter-terrorism and organized crime. Some protesters constructed makeshift barricades and threw objects at officers. Police responded with batons, charging at groups of masked youths who were breaking windows at a car dealership.

Nuñez told reporters that several thousand radical activists had joined the rear of the march. He identified about 500 of them as known rioters. The minister said this concentration of agitators drove the evening violence. Police used tear gas and water cannons to disperse the crowds in multiple locations.

Violence also erupted in Marseille, where demonstrators set fire to barricades made of metal sheets and rubbish bins. In Bordeaux, witnesses saw people tearing wooden boards off a shop. In Lyon, police fired tear gas to clear a crowd from an area the local prefecture had declared off-limits. One protester, a secondary school student, told the BBC that there were about 150 of them in the street. She said visibility was so poor from the gas that people could barely see.

President Emmanuel Macron had issued a decree earlier in the week requiring that only demonstrations organized by recognized trade unions be permitted. Following the previous weekend's unrest, fast-track courts had jailed hundreds of people for vandalism, arson, and looting. The government aimed to use these legal tools to deter further damage.

Protesters expressed deep frustration with their economic conditions. A 26-year-old woman in Paris named Zelie told the BBC that people were suffering a lot. She described the situation as "too much." Two masked teenagers said their generation felt abandoned by the government. One teen admitted looting was not good but blamed poverty and police violence for the behavior.

In Orléans, about 13,000 people rallied peacefully against the hard-right National Rally party. The unrest also spread to other European cities. Riot police fired tear gas at anti-government demonstrators in Tirana, Albania. Clashes were reported in Brussels, while hundreds of soldiers and police blocked protesters in Milan to prevent a repeat of the previous week's violence.

The current wave of protests follows a massive demonstration last weekend involving about 550,000 people. That event resulted in more than 2,500 arrests. Over 2,000 shops and businesses were directly affected, with damage estimated in the hundreds of millions of euros. About 1,000 police officers were injured, including one demonstrator who lost a hand to a crowd-control grenade. With presidential elections six months away, leading contenders have begun to blame Macron and his ministers for the instability.