The violence erupted on Saturday during what began as peaceful marches by tens of thousands of protesters in cities including Paris, Bordeaux, Nice and Marseille. Demonstrators, including parents, teachers and students, were demanding more teachers, repairs to decrepit schools and action on the high cost of living.
However, separate groups of masked rioters and looters took advantage of the marches, storming and torching state buildings, smashing shopfronts and clashing with police. In Limoges, the 19th-century town hall was burned down. The mayor, Guillaume Guérin, said those who stormed the building told a caretaker he would be killed and told elected officials they would be burned. He described the events as "a colossal failure of the state", noting that municipal police ran out of ammunition by mid-afternoon.
In Marseille, masked groups stormed the city hall and a police station. The Socialist mayor, Benoît Payan, told BFMTV: "I have no words … I never thought I'd ever live through something like this. Hordes of rioters and looters attacked our common [state] buildings … with no real demands, but with the sole aim to wreck the demands of those who had demonstrated legitimately." Payan questioned policing tactics, as other town halls in Lille and elsewhere were also targeted.
Grégory Doucet, the Green mayor of Lyon, said he had never seen such violence in his city, including the torching of the historic tourist office. He told Le Monde that shop owners felt abandoned and called on the government to provide a political response to societal demands while also examining the roots of the violence.
In Paris, police arrested a record 855 people. The burnt-out remains of barricades built from bikes and bins littered streets on Sunday. The Socialist deputy mayor, Lamia El Aaraje, said the city had experienced "a level of violence that we have never seen before, I believe". Traders' unions reported more than 1,500 shops and businesses ransacked, with costs running into tens of millions of euros. One shoe-shop owner in Paris said the looters were "organised groups who were breaking things and looting. We'd never seen anything like it."
The interior ministry reported more than 2,000 arrests and about 600 police, firefighters and paramedics injured. A 17-year-old boy had his right hand blown off by a crowd-control grenade in Saint-Étienne.
Macron's centrist government and the far-right presidential frontrunner, Marine Le Pen, both blamed "ultra-left" groups for the violence. Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu said the government would not be "intimidated" by violence, blaming the unrest on the "ultra-left" and criminals. However, radical-left presidential candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who attended the peaceful protest in Paris, accused the government of organisational failings that had "opened the door to chaos". Lecornu responded on social media: "Laying the responsibility for violence on heads of police is a dangerous and cynical reversal of responsibilities."