France protests end in teargas and 565 arrests as crowds shrink

France's third round of cost-of-living protests kicked off with Halloween costumes and ended in clouds of teargas. Police arrested 565 people across the country Saturday after clashes flared in Paris, Marseille, Lyon and Toulouse once the mostly peaceful marches wound down. In Paris, a riot officer took a molotov cocktail to the body — interior minister Laurent Nuñez called it an 'attempted murder.' Four police officers and one gendarme were injured in the capital.

The crowds are thinning. About 320,000 people rallied nationwide, down from an estimated 410,000 a week earlier, according to the interior ministry. In Paris, roughly 70,000 marchers kept to boulevards on the south-eastern edge of the city instead of the centre, setting off from Porte de Bagnolet under a hovering helicopter.

At the march's destination, Porte de Charenton, the mood flipped fast. Dozens of masked people dressed in black used hammers to pry up paving stones and hurl them at police, and at least one incendiary device was thrown at security forces. Officers hit back with teargas and baton charges, with the Paris police prefecture blaming 'a hardcore of several hundred rioters' and saying its officers had 'manoeuvred to restore public order.' Lyon saw projectiles and teargas, while Toulouse police fired a water cannon at an unauthorised rally of several thousand, mostly young, demonstrators.

Nuñez had seen it coming, deploying 70,000 police and gendarmes — elite units included — and warning that Saturday looked like 'a very high risk' day. He said around 150 planned demonstrations around the country had gone off peacefully before violence erupted at the finish. The marchers were a mixed crew: school students who have spent a month demanding better conditions, trade unions and gilets jaunes, all bound together by anger at the cost of living, widening inequality and Emmanuel Macron's government.

'The French economy is doing badly no matter what happens, because today we're being run by a group of incompetents who juggle billions while families are struggling with a few cents,' said Paris protester Jérôme Rodrigues. 'That's why we're here, to keep shouting our demands louder and louder.' In Nantes, demonstrator Camille Guérin put it plainly: 'We say no to the cost of living, no to the far right, yes to high school students' demands, yes to giving citizens a voice.'

Saturday landed two weeks after the 17 October unrest, when street violence and looting across French cities made for one of the country's worst days of civil disorder in recent memory. Students aren't backing off: Sabrine Kharbach of the Union Étudiante said new high school and university blockades are planned for Tuesday and Thursday, before joining the 5 November demonstration called by workers and trade unions. The discontent crossed borders too — German police fired water cannon at youth-led 'Gen Z regelt!' protests, at least two Frankfurt stores were looted, and in Albania's capital Tirana masked youths threw paving stones and firebombs at police during fresh calls for prime minister Edi Rama to resign.