What happened
On October 31, tens of thousands of left-wing demonstrators marched in Paris, with the French Interior Ministry reporting 779 arrests, 116 injured police officers, and 36 damaged stores nationwide. The protests, which were marked by clashes with police and rioting, were part of a third straight weekend of nationwide demonstrations in France.
Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez stated that every march had contained groups of rioters and looters, many driven by the ultra-left and radical far left, who attacked police with the goal of reaching city centers with violence. The most serious incident occurred near Porte de Charenton in Paris, where a Molotov cocktail landed on a gendarme's shield, setting him alight before his colleagues put out the flames.
Similar left-wing rallies took place in some 30 German cities, with some protests turning violent, and unrest also spread to the Netherlands, Italy, and Portugal. In Germany, rioters smashed shop windows, looted stores, and stole weapons from a gun shop, while in the Netherlands, 34 people were arrested and one officer was taken to hospital with suspected hearing damage.
The French government has announced that it will take measures to identify and prosecute those responsible for the violence, with the Paris prosecutor's office opening an attempted murder investigation into the Molotov cocktail attack on the gendarme.
