PARIS (AP) — New curfews were imposed Tuesday in the city centers of Paris and Lyon after the first quiet night since France went into lockdown. the most destructive riots in yearsas Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu said, a “massive” security operation was planned for further protests on Saturday.
Paris police said the curfew in two designated areas – around Place de la République and the Les Halles shopping district – had restored “public peace” overnight and would remain in force “as long as necessary”. The curfew zones leave out other areas affected on Saturday, including the Champs-Élysées and the surroundings of Saint-Lazare train station and parts of Rue de Turbigo in central Paris, where protesters erected barricades and lit fires.
In Lyon, one of France’s largest cities, authorities also renewed the curfew in the city center from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m., saying no disturbances were recorded overnight.
Marseille, France’s second-largest city, imposed a curfew on unaccompanied minors starting Tuesday evening. Lecornu said targeted curfews “helped maintain calm last night.”
The student unions and groups of the “ yellow vest The movement, whose protests against fuel prices shook France in 2018 and 2019, called for a new day of demonstrations on Saturday.
Soldiers from Sentinelle, the counterterrorism operation that has patrolled French cities since the Islamic State group’s attacks in 2015, will guard sensitive sites to free up more police and gendarmes for crowd control, Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez told lawmakers on Tuesday.
“The deployment (of police forces) for next Saturday will be massive,” Lecornu told the National Assembly, the lower house of the French parliament, without giving figures.
A suspect arrested in the fire at Limoges town hall
Police arrested a suspect in the arson attack that ravaged the historic town hall of Limoges in central France on Tuesday, Justice Minister Gérald Darmanin said, adding that the person was in police custody and may not have acted alone.
French media reported that the suspect was close to radical environmental movements and was on a list of people considered potential threats to national security. Darmanin declined to comment on the suspect’s profile, but said far-left groups appeared to have organized to attack state symbols across France.
Images of the 143-year-old building in flames, with its bell tower collapsing, were widely shared online over the weekend. US Vice President JD Vance shared it on » President Donald Trump, who also relayed the video, said the migrants had “taken over France”.
French officials instead blamed the violence on far-left groups and opportunistic looters. At least 2,400 people were arrested on Saturday after rioters clashed with police in several French cities, torched cars and stormed public buildings, in nationwide protests against the rising cost of living and poor conditions in schools.
On Sunday evening, small groups set fire to trash cans, bicycles and other objects in the streets and looted businesses in Paris, Lyon, Marseille and other cities.
In Paris, on Monday evening, a police helicopter flew over the Place de la République at night, the central point of the weekend’s clashes, sweeping the square with a searchlight to check that the curfew was being respected.
Early Tuesday morning, workers used a crane to remove a giant fluorescent yellow vest draped over the statue in the center of the square, then used pressure washers to remove graffiti from the monument.
Louise Bélanger, a volunteer who came to help with the cleanup, said she still could not comprehend the level of violence. “Normally, at 20 you should be optimistic, you should start building something (…) If all you have is anger and violence, what are you going to do? It’s sad for everyone in society,” she said.
Courts promise “extremely firm” response
Speaking in Lille, northern France, Darmanin said 149 people had been jailed across the country as of midday as of Tuesday. According to the Justice Ministry, of the approximately 2,400 people arrested since Saturday, more than 800 were referred to prosecutors, most of whom were either tried immediately or summoned to a later hearing.
In Paris alone, around 300 people were brought before the public prosecutor’s office following the demonstrations on October 17, the city’s prosecutor’s office said in a press release.
Darmanin said he asked prosecutors to appeal any sentence they deemed too lenient. “People without a criminal record who end up in prison for property crimes are extremely rare, if not unprecedented,” he said, asserting that French justice will be “extremely firm”.
In Lille, he said, three men aged 20 to 25 with no criminal record were each sentenced to 10 months in prison and immediately incarcerated for looting a video game store in the city’s old town.
The National Assembly is opening an investigation into the violence of October 17 and the police strategy of the authorities, indicated its president, Yaël Braun-Pivet, whose conclusions are expected “by the end of the year”.
The demonstrations continued on Tuesday, on a smaller scale. Some 400 people, mostly high school and university students, marched in Rennes, in the west of the country, and around 750 in Lyon, in pouring rain.
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Sylvie Corbet and Oleg Cetinic, in Paris, contributed to this report.
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