More than 2,000 people have been arrested and streets and buildings devastated in France after nationwide protests involving hundreds of thousands of demonstrators.
At least half a million people protested rising living costs on Saturday, according to the Interior Ministry – as violent fringe groups set fire to buildings, looted businesses and supermarkets and attacked police vehicles. One protester died after suffering a cardiac arrest during a protest in Paris, where police made a record 855 arrests.
France woke to the aftermath of the unrest on Sunday morning to find their towns pillaged and streets strewn with rubbish and burnt-out cars.
Municipal workers have been deployed in scores of cities across the country as clean-up operations get underway.
Around Paris' Place de la République, dislodged cobblestones, shattered storefronts and broken glass marked the aftermath of the events. Looting and damage were reported around the square and in some other tourist and shopping areas in the city centre.
The mayors of Paris, Marseille and Lyon, the country's three largest cities, requested a meeting with the prime minister in the coming days “given the extent of the damage and the seriousness of the situation”.
Chaos erupted early on Saturday morning in Paris and Marseille, where black-clad protesters stormed the city hall before official marches kicked off.
“It's the Revolution, we're taking the Bastille,” they were heard shouting, as they rammed the doors with security barriers.
As unrest spread, demonstrators in Lyon set fire to the tourism office and smashed its windows, before trying to prevent firefighters from tackling the blaze.
A historic town hall in Limoges, opened in 1883, has been “largely lost” after a large fire broke out and caused the roof to collapse.
French president Emmanuel Macron held an emergency meeting with top government officials on Sunday afternoon, before addressing the nation in the evening.
He said we all feel “anger, shame” after the streets were “ransacked”, and expressed support for French law enforcement, mayors, shop owners, and any affected families.
Mr Macron added the French government will “make examples if need be” of the rioters, warning for “those who want to spark violence and create unrest in our country, we will not yield”.
“The right to protest is a fundamental right. Deliberately and collectively sowing disorder through violence is not," Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez wrote on X, pointing to the looting of hundreds of businesses in Paris, Marseille, Lyon, Bordeaux, Rennes, Strasbourg, Grenoble, Nice, Limoges and other cities.
Mr Nuñez and Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu attributed some of the violence to “radical far-left groups” and said others later joined to loot.
France’s Interior Ministry said around 550,000 people had participated in the demonstrations, while labour union CGT estimated protesters at 800,000 people.
Riot police were seen charging at crowds with batons and firing tear gas as they clashed with protestors across France.
In Paris, officers used water cannons to push back people wearing hoods and masks and throwing fireworks, paving stones and other objects at officers in the Place de la République.
More than 500 police officers and firefighters were injured amid the violence, officials said.
Elsewhere, rioters tried to break into the Galeries Lafayette department store, smashed up banks, looted a Lacoste store as well as other boutiques and looted an SFR mobile phone shop.
Prime minister Sebastien Lecornu blamed ultra-left groups for the “orchestrated violence”.
“To those who clearly want to use this violence as a 'warm-up' before the presidential election, I say clearly: We will not let ourselves be intimidated. No one will impose their political agenda through violence," he wrote in a post on X.
The protests began last month at high schools in Paris' poor northern suburbs amid anger over teacher absences and failing facilities before the nationwide movement against inequality and weak public spending erupted.
Lola, a 19-year-old protester in Paris, said: “We are fighting because the cost of living is too harsh, because the price of fuel is too high, because high school pupils are being violently attacked and hurt all over the country just for trying to protest and ask for more teachers and decent learning conditions.”
In Limoges, the local prefect, Maurice Barate, said the roof had caved in onto lower floors, sparing only the west wing, and that large parts of the exterior had been destroyed.
The destruction of the building, a listed monument that was inspired by Paris' city hall, was a "heritage catastrophe", he said. Its central clock tower and belfry towered 43 metres (141 feet) over the square below.
"It's inadmissible to have burned down the town hall!" one resident called Gilbert said. "Those who did this need to be punished. They need to pay out of their own pocket, it's not for the state to pay."
The town's shaken mayor, Guillaume Guerin, described how the local police force had quickly been overwhelmed by several hundred-strong mob who he said smashed windows and used a battering ram to break down the main door.
"The logistics, the organisation, the premeditation behind yesterday’s attack on the town hall is something I find unbearable," he told reporters.
Mr Guerin said there had been insufficient police numbers to protect the building since officers from the national force had been deployed to the street protest.
"I had no single national police officer to protect the town hall," the centre-right mayor continued. "This country is doing badly, this country is doing very badly, and it’s a small provincial mayor telling you so."
Elsewhere, smaller-scale protests popped up in Belgium, Portugal and Italy across the weekend in the wake of the France protests, with people also protesting rising living costs.
Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report
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