779 arrested in France’s third straight Saturday of protests; attempted-murder probe launched after Molotov cocktails thrown

[Financial News] As large-scale weekend protests against soaring living costs and inadequate social services continued across France for a third consecutive week, prosecutors opened an attempted-murder investigation after Molotov cocktails and improvised explosive devices were thrown at security personnel during the demonstrations.

On the 1st (local time), according to foreign media including Agence France-Presse (AFP) and French broadcaster BFM TV, France’s Interior Ministry said about 320,000 people, including students, labor unions and civic groups, took part in the third Saturday protest held across France, including Paris, on October 31, the previous day. In Paris, 70,000 people took to the streets by 5 p.m.
The turnout was down from 550,000 on the 17th of last month, when the first weekend protest was held, and 410,000 on the 24th. The number of people arrested at the demonstrations also fell sharply to 779, compared with 2,628 at the first protest and 1,314 at the second. The protests were generally more peaceful than the previous two, with around 20 shops suffering damage from vandalism and looting, also fewer than before.
However, as the protests neared their end, intense physical clashes broke out in some cities over the dispersal process. French Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez criticized the protests, saying they had gone well overall but that “unprecedented violence” had occurred toward the end. The Interior Ministry said 159 security personnel, including police officers and gendarmes, were injured in the protests that day.

In particular, near Porte de Charenton in Paris’s 12th arrondissement, hundreds of protesters indiscriminately hurled Molotov cocktails, stones and glass bottles at police and gendarmes. Video from the scene captured the shocking moment an improvised explosive device thrown toward 15 police officers and gendarmes detonated at one gendarme’s feet, with flames quickly spreading to the gendarme’s lower body.
Among those injured, including people with second-degree burns, the gendarme told local broadcaster RTL in an anonymous interview, “I could feel the flammable material spreading across my skin, and it felt as if the heat had engulfed my whole body,” recounting the pain of the moment.
The Paris Prosecutor’s Office said it had immediately opened an investigation on suspicion of “attempted murder of a person exercising public authority.” Marine Le Pen of the far-right National Rally (RN), a leading contender in the next presidential election, also called via X (formerly Twitter) for those responsible for the Molotov cocktail attack to be punished severely.
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