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More than 5,000 people have been arrested in France since Monday amid continuing student protests, Interior Minister Laurent Nunez said Friday in an interview with TF1.
Nunez said incidents of urban violence had been recorded near 158 institutions. He said 735 schools had been affected and 1,747 arrests made, describing the scale of the mobilization as surprising.
Protests and arrests continue
Hundreds of schools were closed or disrupted Friday as demonstrations over learning conditions continued. Nunez said protesters had thrown projectiles and that police officers, teachers, journalists and passersby had been attacked.
Authorities reported about 900 protests outside schools on Thursday and nearly 2,000 arrests. More than 300 police officers and gendarmes were also injured, according to the authorities.
Organizations representing students, alongside left-wing and far-left political groups, have called for another mobilization on Oct. 6, protesting what they describe as police “repression.”
Student loses use of an eye
A 16-year-old injured during protests in Tours, in central France, has lost the use of one eye, France Info reported. The teenager was struck by an LBD-40, a riot-control launcher used by French police that has caused serious injuries at previous protests.
The newspaper La Nouvelle République reported that the teenager remained hospitalized and was interviewed by the General Inspectorate of the National Police on Friday.
Prosecutor disputes account of river incident
Video shared by Alertes Infos on “X” appeared to show a police officer holding a protester’s head underwater in Belfort. Alertes Infos said the officer held the young man underwater for several seconds.
Belfort Public Prosecutor Paul-Edouard Lallois rejected the allegation that the officer had attempted to drown the protester. He said the officer was arresting a suspect who had allegedly tried to start a fire, and that they later moved to another location to avoid being targeted.
Lallois said the officer and the young man lost their balance and fell into a river as the officer attempted to handcuff him for resisting arrest. The officer then pulled him from the water before handcuffing him, the prosecutor added.
After the video circulated, La France Insoumise lawmaker Antoine Leaument tagged the interior minister in a post on “X” and urged him to call for calm among the officers under his responsibility. Leaument said the intervention did not comply with any rules for maintaining public order.
