France Rocked by Student Riot as Videos Show Women Attacked

More than 2,000 people have been arrested in France as a fresh day of unrest involving student protesters left at least 65 education workers injured.

Demonstrations have expanded and become increasingly confrontational across the country this week, with young people protesting what they describe as deepening problems in the education system.

Students say school days are too long, classrooms are poorly equipped and frequently overheated, and staff shortages are disrupting lessons. The government has acknowledged that some concerns are valid, while insisting that violence cannot be justified.

Riot police have been deployed nationwide after reports of schools being set alight and teachers being assaulted.

Officials said at least 65 members of staff, including 40 high school principals, had been injured since the protests began. Around 170 students have also been hurt, while more than 100 high schools have sustained what authorities described as “severe damage.”

As many as 400 schools are expected to remain closed today. Numerous high schools, particularly in the southern city of Marseille, have also announced plans to move lessons online.

Footage recorded yesterday in Besançon appeared to show a large crowd shouting as a teenage boy attacked a woman.

The teenager reportedly seized the woman by the hair and punched her repeatedly, stopping only when several bystanders stepped in.

A local source told the Daily Mail that the confrontation was connected to the wider protests, saying: “There seems to have been a disagreement between this woman and this young man.”

“She claimed it was foolish to set off firecrackers and cause damage. The young man rejected that and appears to have insulted her, which triggered the fight. The young woman threw the first punch.”

Other videos circulated online appeared to depict male students assaulting female education workers.

In another disturbing video filmed in Marseille, a young man dressed in black appeared to corner a woman near a bus stop before directing flames at her with an improvised device.

The teenager was seen igniting an aerosol can and aiming it toward the woman’s face.

Witnesses screamed as flames burst toward the woman. She covered her head while the attacker walked away.

Verified footage posted yesterday also appeared to show a lone policewoman being pursued through a city street before a group of young men tripped her.

The video, filmed in a Paris suburb, ended with the officer on the ground clutching a tear-gas canister.

She was kicked once before the person recording the scene moved away. The video was captioned “police officer swept away,” accompanied by laughing emojis.

Paris prosecutors today said they had opened an investigation into the incident. 

Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez yesterday said: ‘A young trainee lieutenant from the Paris police headquarters was chased, thrown to the ground, and assaulted by several individuals in the 20th arrondissement of Paris.’

He promised to ‘find and prosecute’ the perpetrators of the attack.  

‘The situation is catastrophic,’ one viewer of the video wrote. ‘No-one should condone this.’ 

Their sentiments were echoed by former leader of France’s hard-right National Rally party, politician and lawyer Marine Le Pen.

She wrote on X: ‘The image of this young policewoman, pursued by a howling mob screaming its hatred, thrown to the ground and assaulted, is unbearable.

‘These acts deserve exemplary punishments. Let her know that tonight, millions of French people offer her their warm support.’

National Rally President Jordan Bardella said: ‘Footage of a policewoman being chased through the streets and mobbed on the ground in Paris illustrates what France has become after decades of laxity and mass immigration.

‘How long will we tolerate this barbarism? How long will we let our country sink without reacting?’

Around two-thirds of the more than 2,000 people arrested are in police custody, with up to 90 per cent of them believed to be minors.  

This number already appears to be rising, with officials in Yvelines reporting that 82 arrests have been made this morning. 

Justice minister Gerald Darmanin said today: ‘There is an active and violent minority [participating in the protests]… We’re not entirely sure that they are even high-school students themselves.’

Students have accused police of using excessive force and causing injuries by regularly firing tear gas canisters to disperse the protests. 

Intelligence agencies believe the protest movement had been initiated by politicians from the hard-Left, including members of La France Insoumise (LFI).

But senior LFI official Manuel Bompard accused the government of ‘descending into conspiracy theories’. 

Jean-Luc Mélenchon, de-facto leader of LFI, called on students to remain ‘cool-headed’ and to only use ‘non-violent methods’.

But his calls appear to have fallen on deaf ears, as violence continues to spread across the country. 

So far today, at least two Parisian high schools have been set alight. 

Paris firefighters responded to a fire at the Léonard de Vinci high school in the 15th arrondissement, extinguishing flames at the base of the entrance gate. 

In the 13th arrondissement, the entrance to a vocational high school was blackened by flames after a fire involving bicycles and trash cans spread to the school’s gates, according to the police headquarters. The fire was extinguished by firefighters just before 8am. 

In the western city of Rennes, the tension was already palpable outside the Jean-Mace high school with students dressed in black and wearing balaclavas standing not far from a heavy police presence.

‘As far as we’re concerned, we’ve won – our school is closed this morning,’ said Lola, 16, who declined to give her last name.

She condemned what she said was police violence. ‘It makes us even angrier – the police have no right to hit us or use tear gas on us.’

Police used tear gas at the Kerichen high school in Brest, in western France, an AFP photographer said.

In Strasbourg, riot police threw tear gas grenades at protesters near a university campus following clashes. 

Tear gas was also used against young people outside the Jean-Pierre Timbaud high school in Aubervilliers, a town on the outskirts of Paris. 

Education Minister Edouard Geffray said ‘parents must clearly step up and tell their children not to go’ to the protests, adding: ‘What matters now is ensuring our children are no longer out on the streets, because they are in danger.’

In a bid to ease tensions, Mr Geffray is set to take meetings with education unions, parents’ associations and students’ associations today in light of the violence. 

Justice Minister Darmanin said he has asked prosecutors to hold parents liable for damage caused by their children during the protests and ‘pay for repairs’.

The LFI described this as an ‘absurd measure’. 

There are also calls for LFI to be investigated for their role in the protests. 

Bruno Le Maire, former minister under Emmanuel Macron, wrote on X that he was demanding ‘a parliamentary commission of inquiry into the participation of LFI in acts of violence near high schools’.