PARIS — The bell tower of Limoges’s town hall toppled sideways through the building’s roof on Saturday after what TASS described as groups of radicals broke in and set ground-floor rooms alight. Citing France 3 footage, TASS reported that firefighters fought the blaze for an hour before it reached the roof. Mayor Guillaume Guerin said there were “no words to condemn what happened.”
It was one fire in a weekend whose count kept rising. Interior Minister Laurent Nunez wrote on X on Sunday that 1,800 people had been detained and more than 500 officers injured, TASS said. Anadolu Agency then reported more than 2,000 arrests after Yellow Vest protests marred by violence, with over 600 police officers, gendarmes and firefighters hurt, a toll Nunez called provisional.
Saturday’s figures were far smaller. Nunez told BFMTV that day that about 400 people had been arrested and 60 members of the security forces injured, Xinhua reported. Anadolu said Paris police announced 855 arrests and prosecutors separately reported 720, including 517 held in custody, and that those figures had yet to be finalised.
Interior Ministry figures put Saturday’s turnout at 550,000 nationwide and 110,000 in Paris, while organisers claimed about 800,000, Anadolu reported. The main Paris march passed without any major incidents, it said, and violence came on the sidelines of marches in several cities, where shops were looted in Marseille, Lyon and Bordeaux. Marchers’ demands ran from fuel prices to education and public services, Xinhua said, citing French media. TEH reported in September that French diesel had passed 2.41 euros a litre.
Alexandre Bompard, who heads the Federation of Commerce and Distribution and is Carrefour’s chief executive, said 1,500 retailers were affected and put the damage at “hundreds of millions of euros.” Paris Mayor Emmanuel Gregoire called it “considerable and unprecedented” in an open letter and set a Monday meeting with business owners, insurers and government agencies.
Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu blamed the “ultra-left” for the violence, while opposition figures criticised policing tactics.
The Green politician Marine Tondelier and lawmaker Alexis Corbiere called for Nunez’s resignation, and the National Rally renewed its demand that he step down. Lecornu was due to chair a crisis meeting at 7 pm Paris time and to meet the mayors of Paris, Marseille and Lyon, who demanded explanations over police resources. National Assembly President Yael Braun-Pivet is weighing a parliamentary inquiry, BFMTV reported.
President Emmanuel Macron said on X that those responsible “will be prosecuted and punished,” Xinhua reported. A demonstrator died after collapsing on Boulevard Magenta in Paris, with police reporting cardiorespiratory arrest. Le Parisien reported that a 17-year-old lost a hand when struck by a police grenade in Saint-Etienne, Anadolu said. Guerin pledged a formal complaint, TASS reported.
Calls circulated on social media for new gatherings in Paris and other cities on Sunday, including a 2 pm rally at Place de la Republique, and shopkeepers feared more violence. TEH had found no published count from those gatherings at the time of writing.
