PARIS (AP) — Fresh curfews were being imposed across the city centers of Paris and Lyon on Tuesday after the first quiet night since France’s most destructive rioting in years, as Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu said a “massive” security operation was planned for new protests Saturday.
Paris police said the curfew in two designated zones — around Place de la République and the Les Halles shopping district — had restored “public peace” overnight and would
remain in place “for as long as necessary.” The curfew zones leave out other areas hit on Saturday, including the Champs-Elysées and the area around the Saint-Lazare train station and parts of the Rue de Turbigo in central Paris, where protesters set up barricades and lit fires.
In Lyon, one of France’s largest cities, authorities also renewed a curfew in the city center from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m., saying no disturbances had been recorded overnight.
Marseille, France’s second-largest city, imposed a curfew for unaccompanied minors starting Tuesday night. Lecornu said the targeted curfews “helped keep last night calm.”
Student unions and groups from the “ yellow vest ” movement, whose protests over fuel prices shook France in 2018 and 2019, have called for another day of protests Saturday.
Soldiers from Sentinelle, the anti-terrorism operation that has patrolled French cities since the 2015 Islamic State group attacks, will take over guarding sensitive sites to free up more police officers and gendarmes for crowd control, Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez told lawmakers Tuesday.
“The deployment (of police forces) for next Saturday will be massive,” Lecornu told the National Assembly, France’s lower house of parliament, without giving figures.
Police on Tuesday arrested a suspect in the arson attack that charred the historic city hall in Limoges, in central France, Justice Minister Gérald Darmanin said, adding that the person was being held in police custody and may not have acted alone.
French media reported that the suspect was close to radical environmentalist movements and was on a watchlist of people considered potential threats to national security. Darmanin declined to comment on the suspect’s profile, but said far-left groups appeared to have organized to attack symbols of the state throughout France.
Footage of the 143-year-old building in flames, its bell tower collapsing, spread widely online over the weekend. U.S. Vice President JD Vance shared it on X, blaming the unrest on immigration and writing, “I pray that France, a beautiful country of amazing people, will stop this madness before more of its landmarks burn.” President Donald Trump, who also relayed the video, said migrants had “taken over France.”
French officials have instead blamed the violence on far-left groups and opportunistic looters. At least 2,400 people were arrested after rioters in cities across France on Saturday clashed with police, set cars on fire and stormed public buildings, during nationwide protests against rising living costs and poor conditions in schools.
On Sunday evening, small groups set fire to trash bins, bicycles and other objects in the streets and looted businesses in Paris, Lyon, Marseille and other cities.
In Paris on Monday night, a police helicopter circled over Place de la République overnight, a central point in the weekend clashes, sweeping the square with a searchlight to check that the curfew was being respected.
Early Tuesday morning, workers used a crane to remove a giant fluorescent yellow vest draped over the statue at the center of the square, then used pressure washers to blast graffiti off the monument.
Louise Belanger, a volunteer who came to help with the cleanup, said she still could not apprehend the level of violence. “Normally when you are 20 you should be optimistic, you should be starting to build something (...) If you are only anger and violence, what are you going to do? This is sad for everybody in society,” she said.
Speaking in Lille, northern France, Darmanin said 149 people had been jailed nationwide as of Tuesday at noon. According to the Justice Ministry, of the roughly 2,400 people arrested since Saturday, more than 800 have been sent before prosecutors, most of whom were either put on trial immediately or ordered to appear at a later hearing.
In Paris alone, about 300 people have been sent before prosecutors following the Oct. 17 protests, the city prosecutor’s office said in a statement.
Darmanin said he had asked prosecutors to appeal any sentence they considered too lenient. “People with no criminal record ending up in prison for property crimes is extremely rare, if not unheard of,” he said, arguing that the French justice system will be “extremely firm.”
In Lille, he said, three men aged 20 to 25 with no criminal record were each sentenced to 10 months in prison and jailed immediately for looting a video game store in the city’s old town.
The National Assembly is launching an inquiry into the Oct. 17 violence and the authorities’ policing strategy, its speaker, Yaël Braun-Pivet, said, with findings expected “by the end of the year.”
Protests continued Tuesday on a smaller scale. Some 400 people, mostly high school and university students, marched in the western city of Rennes, and about 750 in Lyon, under pouring rain.
___
Sylvie Corbet and Oleg Cetinic, in Paris, contributed to this report.
