France Arrests 1,314 as Protests Spread to 298 Cities and Far-Right Activists Appear

French police made 1,314 arrests nationwide and 53 officers were hurt on Saturday as protests spread across the country, Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez said Sunday. He said daytime marches "passed off well," but that police later faced "an extremely elevated level of violence" from "ultra-left" groups.

The Interior Ministry counted about 410,000 people at roughly 298 protests. The CGT union put the figure at about 800,000, and no explanation for the gap was available. Authorities deployed up to 70,000 officers, along with helicopters, armored vehicles and water cannons. Looting occurred, Nuñez said, but "the scale was far smaller" than the previous week, when about 3,000 businesses were damaged or looted. He credited faster police action, more checks before demonstrations and better protection for shops and shopping centers. Police confiscated metal balls, lead pellets, fireworks, slingshots, steel balls, improvised weapons, a katana and airsoft weapons.

In Paris, shops were boarded up and events tied to the NFL's first game in France were canceled. An authorized march was moved at the last minute from the Bastille to the more remote Porte d'Italie, a change union representative Murielle Guilbert called "scandalous," though participants complied. Police counted 110,000 marchers and unions counted 250,000. Clashes lasted about two hours after the march, when Nuñez said "several thousand radical activists" gathered at the rear, including about 500 identified as rioters. The Paris prosecutor's office said 64 people were arrested, six of them minors, and 40 were placed in custody. Police stopped and checked more than 3,000 people.

Elsewhere, tear gas was used in Lyon, where demonstrations were banned, in Nantes, where thousands broke through police lines, and in Marseille, where police estimated 17,000 attendees. Tear gas was also deployed in Clermont-Ferrand, Bordeaux and Strasbourg, and one person was seriously injured in Clermont-Ferrand. In Toulouse, a 20-year-old man reportedly had fingers blown off. In Orléans, police estimated 11,000 people and organizers 26,000 marched against a National Rally congress, where Marine Le Pen is launching her campaign to succeed Macron with elections about six months away.

Nuñez said far-right activists appeared in Cannes and Montpellier, claiming to protect businesses or seeking fights with ultra-left militants, the first time authorities had seen that. In Nice, where demonstrations were banned, 11 people were arrested after far-right extremists fought demonstrators downtown and water cannons were used.

The unrest began in September, when high school students in southeast Paris protested for better conditions. It spread nationwide over rising living costs and education issues. A shooting in the Paris suburb of Trappes that killed one person and injured several others, which President Emmanuel Macron called a "racist terror attack" and prosecutors are treating as terrorism, was also referenced on some placards. The Yellow Vests plan another round of protests on Oct. 31, with rallies and sit-ins at parliament and city halls, condemning what they call the "authoritarian drift" of Macron's government.

The protests reached other European capitals. In Italy, police made nine arrests and briefly detained 371 people in eight cities, 110 of them minors, and 500 soldiers were deployed in Milan. Protesters briefly broke into the Colosseum in Rome. In Tirana, Albania, riot police used water cannons on students and opposition protesters outside Prime Minister Edi Rama's office.