Hundreds detained as student protests across France turn violent

More than 400 people, most of them children, have been detained in France on Tuesday after teenagers across the country blockaded their schools in protest at class sizes, teacher shortages and long timetables.

Interior minister Laurent Nunez told BFM TV: “440 were detained across national territory. We don’t have the final tally yet, but I’m told two-thirds led to police custody.”

The education ministry said 400 schools were affected by protests or disruptions on Tuesday, out of about 3,700 across the country.

The demonstrations began in Paris last week and have since escalated and spread across France. On Tuesday, high school pupils in Lille, northern France, set fire to dustbins and threw bottles, paving stones and other projectiles at police. Officers responded with teargas after protesters vandalised bus shelters and advertising hoardings.

“There is nothing that justifies showing up at institutions to demonstrate, masked, with your face disguised, carrying projectiles, and waiting for the intervention of law enforcement just to go after them,” Nunez said, adding that Tuesday’s clashes saw seven instances of hydrochloric acid being thrown at officers. A total of 48 police have been injured during the clashes across the country.

There were also confrontations between children and police in Bordeaux, Rennes and Nantes in western France, and Marseille in the south. At the Lamartine lycée, in the north of Paris, students waved placards complaining they had exhausting timetables. One read: “8am-6pm. More hours of lessons than sleep.”

In the Paris suburb of Seine-Saint-Denis, mayor Bally Bagayoko joined a protest of hundreds of students at the Lycee Paul-Eluard.

Leading students in a rendition of the national anthem, he described the protests as “completely legitimate” and complained that low-income areas received less resources than higher-income ones.

When a crowd formed, police carrying riot shields struck the students with batons, Agence France-Presse reported.