Violence returns to France as student protesters clash with cops

DAILYMAIL.COM • 1d ago

By PERKIN AMALARAJ, FOREIGN NEWS REPORTER and ELIANA SILVER, SENIOR FOREIGN NEWS REPORTER 07:36 06 Oct 2026, updated 19:41 06 Oct 2026

A far-Left mayor who praised student rioters causing chaos across France today joined them during a violent protest in Paris.

France suffered yet another day of disorder and violence today, with police and student rioters clashing in towns and cities across the country.

In Paris, officers were seen using tear gas and pepper spray on protesters in the centre of the capital city. And riot police, covered in body armour, used shields and batons to push back demonstrators, who threw stones and rocks at them.

Rioters were joined by Bally Bagayoko, the far-Left mayor of Saint-Denis, a poor Paris suburb, who was seen on the front lines of the protest.

The mayor, who belongs to the La France Insoumise (LFI) party, drew criticism last week for claiming: ‘Violence can become legitimate at a certain point.’

He was today seen confronting riot police in a suit and tie, standing side-by-side with balaclava-wearing thugs.

Students were also joined by tens of thousands of demonstrators from France’s powerful trade unions. The country’s interior ministry today said 256,000 people, including 56,000 in Paris alone, had taken to the streets – far exceeding earlier estimates.

Parisian police said at least 300 rioters were trying to attack law enforcement, throwing rocks and fragments of pavements at them. In Rennes, north-west France, police used water cannons against protesters.

French newspaper Le Parisien reported that some inciters were telling their Snapchat followers to ‘bring knives’ and ‘stab civilians in the crowd’ outside the Couffignal high school in Strasbourg.

Police sources told the newspaper that they had received reports concerning potential violence during blockades outside schools in the French city.

It comes as officials announced a 15-year-old boy had been arrested on Monday for allegedly taking part in a gang attack of a policewoman in Paris.

Weeks of pupil blockades protesting against failing school conditions have in recent days escalated into violent clashes with police across hundreds of campuses.

Students have walked out complaining of missing teachers, overloaded timetables, dilapidated classrooms and buildings that cannot cope with rising temperatures.

The demonstrations quickly turned into pupils lighting dustbin fires, torching bus shelters and clashing with riot police, who have in turn responded with batons, tear gas and riot-control rounds.

In France’s National Assembly, Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu responded to the demonstrations, telling lawmakers in the National Assembly that there was ‘no room for tolerance of violence’.

‘Burning down a high school does not improve the state of high school buildings,’ he told parliament, adding it was a ‘lie’ to suggest the government had ordered ‘police repression’ against protesters.

At the mass march in Paris, Ryad Rani – the president of the country’s high school student union – decried the government’s ‘complete lack of political response’.

He said: ‘Today is a fight for dignity. This is serious, it’s incredibly violent; when young people rise up, the government represses them.’

Officials said this afternoon that classes at nearly 900 schools had been either totally or partially suspended amid the nationwide protests.

Since the start of the movement, 24 schools have been burned or ransacked, according to the education minister.

More than 5,000 people, 87 per cent of them minors, have been arrested. Mr Lecornu’s office said 85 teaching staff have also been injured.

Officials added that more than 1,800 people are being prosecuted, including 1,483 minors, but did not specify the crimes. Some 790 cases had been dismissed.

The French government says 215 students and 715 officers have been injured since the start of the movement, with a 15-year-old reportedly losing his hand on Monday when he picked up a stun grenade fired by riot police.

Footage from the scene showed several people tending to the young man as he lay on the pavement. His left hand appeared to be missing, with a bloody stump in its place.

Several people were heard screaming in the video. He was later seen slowly walking away from the scene. Other reports claim he lost his arm up to his elbow but this has not been confirmed.

US President Donald Trump waded into the row over protests on his Truth Social account on Tuesday, blaming the chaos on ‘mass migration’.

He wrote: ‘What’s happening in France is nothing less than out of control mass migration.

‘This isn’t about schools, this is about Islam wanting to take over a once great Country! President DJT.’

The unrest has erupted with just months to go before the 2027 election to choose a successor to centrist President Emmanuel Macron after his maximum two terms in office.

With just six months before an election to replace Mr Macron, his government and the far-Right National Rally, led by presidential front-runner Marine Le Pen, have accused hard-Left LFI lawmakers and mayors of stoking the protests. The LFI denies the accusation.

Bally Bagayoko, the LFI mayor of Saint-Denis who joined the protest today, had previously condemned the violence but said: ‘I stand by being on the side of my residents, and high school students are my residents.’

The French Greens, meanwhile, called on elected officials and parents of rioters to join in wearing ‘with white helmets, white armbands, white clothing, to go and protect our children in the demonstrations’.

Green leader Marine Tondelier spoke in front of a high school in Lens – the city where the teenager’s hand was blown off by a stun grenade on Monday – saying: ‘All political families together should have this concern to allow our young people, those who wish to do so, to express their demands in safety.’

More protests are expected across the country on Tuesday after teaching was disrupted at 589 of the country’s 3,700 lycees – the equivalent of UK sixth forms – and 32 universities, according to the education ministry and a student union.

Also on Monday, hard-Left rioters set fire to the entrance of a Paris school, leaving teachers and pupils trapped inside.

Footage taken outside the Vauquelin high school in Paris showed violent thugs setting fire to the school’s entrance.

Through smashed glass, flames were seen licking the front doors of the school. The flames appeared to be coming from a blockade.

After several seconds, two men with fire extinguishers were seen trying in vain to douse the flames from inside the building.

However, the blaze grew in size and ferocity. Behind it, young thugs were seen throwing things into the blockade, fuelling the flames.

Local media reported that around 100 students needed to be evacuated from the school, adding that demonstrators were shooting fireworks at firefighters during the operation.

Carole Zerbib, head of the vandalised school, said it had been attacked by a ‘very determined’ group wearing hoods and masks who tried to break through its main entrance and then lit a fire.

The school is one of hundreds affected by violence that has plagued France since last week.

Many educational institutes will begin a second week of closures ahead of a nationwide day of demonstrations today.

In Lille, northern France, Gaston Berger high school was blockaded on Monday morning. Students were seen gathering around a large bonfire.

And over in Caen, north-west France, the gate of Victor Hugo high school was set alight. Rioters appeared to have thrown bins and other large items into a pile before setting it on fire.

In central Paris, dozens of teenage students demonstrated outside a school while passing cars honked their horns. Some classmates made their way inside to attend lessons.

‘We’re missing our lessons to give you one,’ read one cardboard sign outside the Turgot high school in Paris’s third arrondissement.

In Bordeaux, in the south-west, some students returned to the classroom while others continued to demonstrate in front of riot police.

Some protesters outside the Gustave Eiffel high school aimed fireworks at police, who responded sporadically with tear gas.

Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu’s office has called for ‘peaceful’ gatherings, calling for a return to ‘a structured, legal and democratic form of opposition’.

He has also ordered government officials to tackle the students’ main demands, including ensuring absent teachers are replaced, reviewing the length of the 8am to 6pm school day and the need for longer lunch breaks.

The government would also look at repairs needed to ageing school buildings, said Mr Lecornu, who demanded ministers send in their first proposals by the end of October.

But finding spare cash will be difficult.

The protests have piled pressure on a government trying to narrow a ballooning budget deficit as investor concerns about France’s growing debt pile, weak growth and reluctance to rein in spending push bond yields higher.

The yield on France’s ten-year bonds briefly hit a 24-year high of over 5 per cent last week.

The surge in French borrowing costs has started to spill into the broader euro area, with the sliding euro currency the latest alarm bell for policy makers.

Finance Minister Roland Lescure said on Tuesday there was no need for the European Central Bank to step in.

The head of the CGT labour union Sophie Binet has said its members would be there to ‘protect high-school students’.

Several unions have accused the police of using disproportionate force against the protesters.

The police have launched ten internal investigations into allegations of brutality since they started, Interior Minister Laurent Nunez said late on Monday. He added that the police response has been proportionate in ‘almost all cases’.

‘The only response they’ve received so far is repression,’ Sigrid Gerardin, a Paris high schoolteacher, said of the pupils.

Felix Barney, a university student, described the police response as disproportionate. ‘It doesn’t have any sense to hit minors,’ he said.

The government has sought to address the grievances, while accusing hard-Left activists of having hijacked the protest movement.

The government is also pushing legislation to make those responsible for damaging public property pay for repairs themselves, instead of using public funds.

Mr Lecornu has said the draft law could allow compensation payments to be recovered from family allowances and housing benefits while ensuring a minimum income.

Union leader Ms Binet has said it would ‘end up targeting the most vulnerable families’.

The hard-Right National Rally (RN) party had an even firmer proposal. RN representative Sébastien Chenu, who is also the vice-president of the National Assembly, called for families of rioters to be punished if their children take part in these protests.

He said: ‘We must act using this lever of cutting benefits, we must go further and evict people from social housing if their child misbehaves.’

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