More than half a million people joined marches in scores of cities
Police made nearly 2,400 arrests across France, while almost 1,000 officers were injured, the interior minister said. In Limoges, southwestern France, mayor Guillaume Guerin denounced the chaos after the city’s 143-year-old town hall was set ablaze and largely destroyed in an arson attack on Saturday.
“It’s like a war zone here,” said Dutch entrepreneur Tije De Boer, who had come to Paris with his kids to visit a friend and said the protests forced him to evacuate his hotel, a trouble hotspot Saturday. Interior minister Laurent Nunez said several hundred shops had been damaged Saturday. Police fired tear gas and used water cannons after several hundred hooded protesters broke shop windows and set bins on fire, sources said.
Fresh clashes broke out in Paris Sunday a day after France suffered one of its worst days of unrest in years, with protests over high prices leaving one demonstrator dead, thousands arrested and shops across the country looted or damaged. Nationwide protests erupted into riots Saturday, with a town hall torched, shops ransacked, and buildings covered in graffiti as violent groups clashed with police in cities across the country. One protester died after suffering a cardiac arrest during demonstrations in Paris. violent fringe groups targeted public buildings, looted luxury boutiques and supermarkets, and attacked police vehicles and officers While hundreds of thousands protested peacefully. Milan police clashed Sunday with protesters throwing stones and looting shops during protests against poor services and the rising cost of living, a day after similar unrest in several Italian cities. In Portugal, hundreds of tents populated Lisbon’s Rossio Square and Porto’s Praça D João I Sunday, with protesters saying they intended to continue their action indefinitely. The demonstrations followed a police operation to clear a housing protest camp last week. The protests have broadened into a national campaign over unaffordable rents, low wages and rising food and fuel prices.