Published on •Updated
More than 1,300 people were arrested across France on Saturday as another wave of mass protests swept the country, with more than 400,000 people taking to the streets.
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Whilst most demonstrations went ahead peacefully, clashes with police occurred in cities including Paris, Marseilles, Lyon, Bordeaux, Toulouse and Rennes.
In the French capital, a Euronews journalist on the ground saw riot police fire tear gas and charge crowds around Porte de Vincennes on the southeastern edge of the city, whilst some protesters launched fireworks towards officers. Police also deployed a water cannon in an attempt to break up demonstrators and carried out checks of people moving through the nearby Nation square.
Authorities had planned a significantly ramped up security operation following the chaotic scenes that took place across France last weekend, when major cost-of-living protests descended into violence and looting.
Some 70,000 security personnel were mobilised ahead of Saturday’s planned protests. Military personnel from Opération Sentinelle were also deployed to help protect key locations and free up police.
Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez thanked authorities and officers for their work on Saturday but accused “individuals from the far-left and radical far-left” of having “once again sought to sow disorder, especially as the marches were dispersing.”
“These acts are unacceptable,” he wrote in a post on social media, pointing to locations including Paris, Marseille, Lyon, Grenoble, Nantes, Angers and Lille.
The Yellow Vests movement has called for further demonstrations on 31 October.
To the south of the capital, authorities are also continuing to keep a close watch over the hard-right National Rally party’s congress in Orléans, which drew both supporters and counterprotesters on Saturday. On Sunday, the party will hold a major rally to kick off Marine Le Pen’s presidential campaign.
According to the Prefecture of the Centre-Val de Loire region and of the Loiret, 3,000 law enforcement and emergency personnel were deployed in Orléans on Saturday as 13,000 demonstrators marched through the city.
