Violence erupts in Paris

Violence erupted in Paris on Saturday for the second consecutive weekend at a mass protest against a new security law, with demonstrators clashing with police, vehicles set alight and shop windows smashed.
The weekly nationwide protests are becoming a major headache for president Emmanuel Macron’s government, with tensions intensified by the beating of a black music producer by police last month. Police arrested 95 people during protests across France against a planned security law, and 67 officers were injured during the demonstrations, interior minister Gerard Darmanin said Sunday.
In Paris, the site of the worst violence, 48 police officers or gendarmes were injured during Saturday’s street clashes, the interior ministry said on Twitter.
A firefighter was also injured in the capital after being hit by a projectile, a police source said.
Paris police held 25 people, including two minors, said the prosecutors’ office.
It was the second weekend of violence in the capital during protests against a security bill currently going through French parliament.
Demonstrators clashed with police, vehicles were set alight and shop windows smashed.
The weekly nationwide protests are becoming a major headache for president Emmanuel Macron’s government, with tensions intensified by the beating of a black music producer by police last month. Paris city officials and others also expressed outrage over the way police broke up an improvised migrant camp in the heart of Paris in November. Darmanin has ordered an investigation into the incident.
However, the numbers were less than half this Saturday with the nationwide figure at 52,350 against 133,000 a week earlier, the interior ministry said.
Around 5,000 people demonstrated in Paris against 46,000 last week, it added.
Members of the so-called yellow vests movement, which shook Macron with protests against a lack of equality in France over the winter of 2018-2019, were also prominent in the rally.
Windows of a supermarket, property agency and bank were broken while several cars were in flames along Avenue Gambetta as thousands of demonstrators marched towards the central Place de la Republique, AFP reporters said.
Objects were also thrown at police who responded by using tear gas, in a repeat of the violent scenes from the protests last weekend against the security law that would restrict publication of pictures showing the faces of police.
Some demonstrators used objects left in the streets to create impromptu barricades that they then set on fire. A bank was ranscaked by protesters who broke inside and brought out papers that they burned in the street.
Protesters, some letting off smoke bombs and firecrackers, shouted slogans including ‘Everyone hates the police’.
Interior minister Gerald Darmanin wrote on Twitter that police in Paris were facing ‘very violent individuals’.
‘The thugs are breaking down the Republic,’ he said.
Sixty-four people were detained across the country, Darmanin said, adding that eight police were injured.
AFP