World: France holds third weekend of cost-of-living protests, with 320,000 demonstrators and 511 arrests
Paris, France — Hundreds of thousands of people, mostly young, took to the streets of France on Saturday in a third consecutive weekend of protests against the cost of living, fuel prices and education conditions, in a day that ended with clashes in several cities.
The Interior Ministry estimated about 320,000 demonstrators nationwide, including about 70,000 in the main Paris march, a lower figure than the more than 500,000 on October 17 and the 410,000 on October 24, according to official estimates. Authorities deployed around 70,000 police officers and gendarmes across the country and rerouted the Paris march away from the city center after the unrest of previous weeks.
In Paris, the march began at Porte de Bagnolet, in the east of the capital, and clashes broke out when it reached its endpoint at Porte de Charenton, where police tried to disperse the crowd with tear gas, water cannons and mortar fire, while protesters responded with projectiles. Police blamed the attacks on a “hard core of several hundred rioters” at the rear of the march, according to Le Monde, and the National Gendarmerie said an officer was struck in the leg by a Molotov cocktail and suffered burns.
The protests also brought incidents in other cities: in Marseille, where some 10,000 people gathered, some demonstrators broke into homes and surveillance cameras were set on fire; in Lyon, protesters burned United States and Israeli flags; and in Bordeaux, about 11,000 people marched while a demonstrator smashed a piñata of President Emmanuel Macron. By 8:00 p.m., authorities confirmed 511 arrests nationwide.
The movement began in late September with high school students protesting budget cuts, teacher shortages and deteriorating schools, and was later joined by unions, cost-of-living activists and far-left groups, according to reports. Demonstrations also spread to other European countries: in Germany there were clashes in Frankfurt, Hamburg and Cologne, and in Albania Molotov cocktails were thrown at police in Tirana.
Photo: AP / Aurelien Morissard
Source: New York Post