By Sybille de La Hamaide
PARIS, Oct 18 (Reuters) – Fresh clashes broke out in Paris on 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 demonstrations erupted into riots on 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. Police made more than 2,000 arrests across France, while more than 600 officers were injured, the interior minister said.
“It’s like a war zone here,” said Dutch entrepreneur Tije De Boer, who had come to Paris with his children to visit a friend and said the protests forced him to evacuate his hotel at Place de la Republique, a trouble hotspot on Saturday.
Police again clashed with protesters and fired tear gas at Place de la Republique on Sunday afternoon, and packs of bikes were set on fire. A Reuters witness estimated several hundred protesters were in the area.
In Marseille, France’s second largest city, the local prefecture also reported some incidents in the afternoon, with attempts made by groups to break into shops.
More than half a million people joined marches in scores of cities on Saturday, marking the convergence of a month-long student movement with broader social discontent against rising living costs and declining public services.
President Emmanuel Macron will address the nation at 8 p.m. local time (1800 GMT) on Sunday, his office said.
Saturday’s unrest laid bare the deep anger at Macron, who leaves office in 2027 after a decade in power that has increasingly become defined by social discontent, a weak economy and ballooning debt.
The government has blamed the violence on hard-left and ultra-left groups, as well as criminals who it said instigated the looting.
French far-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen called for calm, saying France must not become accustomed to images of the country being battered, abused, and ransacked.
“Violence is not an opinion. Destruction is not a form of expression. And chaos cannot serve as a project for France,” she said in a video address.
SEVERAL HUNDRED SHOPS DAMAGED
While hundreds of thousands protested peacefully, violent fringe groups targeted public buildings, looted luxury boutiques and supermarkets, and attacked police vehicles and officers.
A massive clean-up operation began in cities from Lille in the north to Marseille in the south and Strasbourg in the east to Bordeaux in the southwest, where a masked mob invaded the residence of the local prefect.
Interior Minister Laurent Nunez said several hundred shops had been damaged on Saturday.
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, drawing comparisons to the 2019 fire that devastated Paris’s Notre-Dame Cathedral.
“There was a clear, premeditated intention to burn down the town hall, and the people inside feared for their lives,” Guerin told Reuters. He threatened to resign if the city did not receive the funds needed to repair the town hall.
PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION TO TAKE PLACE NEXT YEAR
The unrest has increased pressure on President Macron and his government ahead of a presidential election due next year. Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu blamed the unrest on the “ultra-left” and criminals.
Economy Minister Roland Lescure pledged support on Sunday for business owners who suffered losses. “Those who break things will pay, repair the damage and be held accountable for their intention to sow chaos,” Lescure said in a statement.
Bordeaux Mayor Thomas Cazenave said up to 100 stores had been looted in his city, while Marseille Mayor Benoit Payan announced emergency financial aid to support those businesses impacted by the violence.
French retailer Carrefour’s CEO Alexandre Bompard told French broadcaster BFMTV that 50 of the company’s shops had been damaged, including 20 that were looted, with losses from the damage running into the tens of millions of euros.
The protests began last month over school conditions and teacher shortages in working-class suburbs, before broadening into a movement against inequality, public spending cuts and the rising cost of living.
(Reporting by Sybille de La Hamaide; Additional reporting by Natasa Bansagi, Janis Laizans, Abdul Saboor, Clotaire Achi, Marc Leras; Editing by Richard Lough, Elaine Hardcastle and Jan Harvey)
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