In Paris and many cities across France, clean-up crews pushed past broken glass, charred garbage cans and vandalized bus shelters on Friday after a night of violent riots between black blocs and police. A sticker on an ATM gave the headline for Thursday’s session: “Paris is burning.” Protest rallies that gathered large crowds against a bill approved by President Emmanuel Macron by decree to delay the retirement age by two years, to 64, had been mostly peaceful during the day.
However, on Thursday night violent clashes broke out across the country, in which a police station in the city of Lorient (western France) was attacked, the main entrance to the Bordeaux town hall was set on fire and hundreds were registered. of fires in various locations in the territory, 903 of which, only in Paris. The ninth day of the strike and protests ended with some 441 injured policemen and 475 people arrested. Dozens of protesters were also injured, including a woman who lost a thumb in the Normandy city of Rouen.
Macron is under severe pressure to find a way out of a crisis that has caused some of the worst street violence in France in years, over a pension reform bill that he has ratified in Parliament without submitting it to parliament. vote.
