France arrests 980 after protests turn violent

Ninety-eight hundred protesters were detained in France on Saturday. The Interior Ministry released the figure late in the day. Authorities said the number would likely rise.

The interior ministry estimated that 410,000 people joined the demonstrations. Unions claimed the turnout reached 800,000. Approximately 70,000 police officers were deployed across the country. This deployment aimed to prevent a repeat of the disorder seen the previous weekend. That earlier unrest involved hundreds of looted businesses and torched buildings.

Daytime marches remained largely peaceful. Violence began in the evening. Police used tear gas and water cannon in several cities. In Marseille, protesters set fire to barricades. In Bordeaux, people tore boards off a shop. In Lyon, officers fired tear gas at a crowd in a zone declared off-limits by the local prefecture.

Trouble in Paris started near the end of a march from Porte d'Italie to Porte de Vincennes. An elite police unit assigned to organized crime and counter-terrorism joined the operation. Protesters built makeshift barricades and threw objects at officers. Police charged with batons at masked youths smashing windows at a car dealership.

Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez stated that several thousand radical activists gathered at the rear of the march. He identified around 500 individuals as rioters. Nuñez reported that two people suffered serious injuries. One was in Toulouse and the other in Clermont-Ferrand.

Protesters expressed frustration with government policies. Zelie, a 26-year-old woman in Paris, told the BBC that people are suffering a lot. She said it has been too much. Two masked teenagers described their generation as abandoned. One teenager admitted looting was bad but blamed poverty and police violence. About 13,000 people rallied peacefully in Orléans against the National Rally party.

Riot police in Tirana, Albania, fired tear gas at anti-government demonstrators. Clashes were also reported in Brussels. In Milan, hundreds of soldiers and police blocked protesters from gathering. Last weekend, about 550,000 people marched against rising fuel prices. More than 2,500 arrests followed that event. Chambers of Commerce and Industry estimated the damage from the previous weekend at hundreds of millions of euros.