France will reinforce police with troops and mount a huge security operation for more protests planned on Saturday, the government said on Tuesday, acknowledging failures in its response to last weekend's violence.
“The deployment next Saturday will be massive,” Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu said, adding that the immediate priority was to restore order after rioting and looting swept Paris, Marseille, Lyon and other cities on 17 October.
In a sometimes rowdy debate, Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez said the military would be deployed alongside police, while the government pledged to overhaul tactics after widespread criticism that city centres had been left vulnerable.
Framing the crisis as a choice “between violence and the Republic”, Lecornu blamed the unrest on far-left groups, who in turn have accused the government of underestimating public anger over high living costs and declining public services.
The turmoil shocked France because of both its scale and the apparent inability of police to contain it, inflaming tensions ahead of presidential elections next year with candidates from the far right and hard left performing strongly in polls.
Protests in other European countries, including Italy and Albania, have added to concerns that anger over living standards risks spreading around the continent at a time when many nations, including France, are struggling with budget woes.
A night of relative calm in France followed targeted curfews imposed in several areas affected by the chaos, which the government said had helped reassert control. The localised curfews, some directed at children and teenagers under age 18, were extended to Tuesday night, police said.
Lecornu acknowledged shortcomings in the state's response at the weekend, saying there had been intelligence failures, while police deployments had been too static and authorities had erred by not cancelling planned police leave.
Parliament is setting up a commission of inquiry to establish the causes of the unrest, while authorities have assigned 200 investigators to identify and track down those involved in the street violence.
Police arrested on Tuesday a man suspected of starting a blaze that destroyed a historic town hall in the central city of Limoges during the rioting. Officials said he had been on a security watch list and belonged to an ultra-left group..
France's main student union UNEF has called for further protests on Saturday, pledging to maintain pressure on Macron's government over what it says is a deteriorating and underfunded education system. “We carry on,” it said on social media.
Separately, groups identifying themselves as “Gilets Jaunes” (Yellow Vests) called for protest actions over rising fuel costs.
Italy faces new form of unrest, minister says
Northern Italian cities, including the financial capital Milan, were also hit by riots last weekend.
Though not on the scale seen in France, the unrest nonetheless jolted Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni's government, which was expected to introduce new security measures at a cabinet meeting on Tuesday.
Defence Minister Guido Crosetto described the disturbances as a form of “hybrid warfare” conducted through social media platforms such as TikTok, YouTube and other online networks.
“The events in Milan and elsewhere in Italy are fundamentally different from those seen in other eras,” Crosetto wrote on X. “The West has yet to realise this or take any meaningful action in response.”
In Milan's central Corso Vittorio Emanuele II, sportswear retailer On and a Levi's store that were targeted during the unrest had reopened on Tuesday but remained boarded up. Luxury stores had restored merchandise to window displays after temporarily removing it for security reasons.
In Albania, protesters were expected to take to the streets of Tirana for a seventh consecutive day against the government of Prime Minister Edi Rama.
A new study in mice suggests the brain’s protective barrier does more than block harmful substances. It also delivers essential proteins from...
Melting glaciers, recurring droughts and dust storms are putting growing pressure on Central Asia’s water resources, agriculture and public h...
The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) says 3.7 million children in Afghanistan are suffering from acute malnutrition, as worsening drou...
European leaders gathered in Dublin on Thursday, 12 November, for the ninth European Political Community (EPC) summit, with security, defence and energy high on the agenda. Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev held talks focused on peace, trade and regional cooperation.
Iran will not let a single particle of its enriched nuclear material leave the country, and any new U.S. attack would be met with strikes on distant American bases, Iranian security chief Mohsen Rezaei has said.
Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang is stepping down amid reports linking him to a woman suspected by U.S. authorities of spying for China, throwing the future of the $4 trillion chipmaker into uncertainty.
Four million workers across Spain joined a general strike on Wednesday over the country’s deepening housing crisis, unions said, bringing disruption to factories, ports, shops and public transport just weeks before a snap general election.
Kazakhstan’s security service has arrested Nurlan Zhakupov, CEO of Samruk-Kazyna, the country’s sovereign wealth fund, on suspicion of corruption. Yelzhas Otynshiyev, Chairman of KTZ, Kazakhstan’s national railway firm has also been detained.
The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) says 3.7 million children in Afghanistan are suffering from acute malnutrition, as worsening drought and funding shortages threaten to deepen the crisis amid the COP31 climate summit in Türkiye.
A consortium of Türkiye’s Limak and Qatar’s HBK Contracting has won an international tender to build and operate a new airport terminal in Bukhara, Uzbekistan, under a 23-year public-private partnership, with the project potentially costing up to $300 million.
Spain’s parliament has approved a government package aimed at easing the country’s housing crisis, a day after workers staged the first general strike in 14 years over soaring housing costs.
Here's your AnewZ Technology Daily Brief for the 13th of November. This week, a Microsoft outage hit Australian agencies, Google restricted mapping data in South Korea, a lawsuit targeted advanced AI development, and Nvidia faced a leadership crisis after Jensen Huang's resignation.
Microsoft struggled to restore its services on Friday after a major outage disrupted Outlook, Teams and Copilot across the United States and Asia-Pacific region.
You can download the AnewZ application from Play Store and the App Store.
What is your opinion on this topic?
Leave the first comment