TEHRAN — France spent Sunday sweeping up after its worst street unrest in years. A town hall lies gutted in Limoges, about 1,800 people are under arrest, and as of writing this, the government has yet to say what it will do next.

Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez said 550,000 people took part in Saturday’s demonstrations, including 110,000 in Paris, while the CGT (General Confederation of Labor), one of France’s largest trade unions, put the nationwide turnout at 800,000.

Paris police recorded a record 855 arrests. One protester died following a cardiorespiratory arrest north of Paris, according to BFMTV.

The first attack came at dawn, on the shared Paris headquarters of CNews, Europe 1 and the JDD. By afternoon, police faced wildcat groups of 500 to 1,000 people, then waves of looters.

In Marseille, a crowd breached city hall and toppled a bust of Marianne. A tourist office burned in Lyon. In Limoges, a mob that Mayor Guillaume Guerin says used a battering ram set fire to the town hall, opened in 1883 and spared by two world wars. Its 43-meter clock tower fell.

“I had no single national police officer to protect the town hall,” said Guerin, a center-right mayor whose city’s officers were sent to the street march.

A retail trade group counts about 1,500 shops damaged. AFP described looting that looked planned, with crews of about six masked, gloved men disabling security cameras first.

At Place de la République, protesters put a yellow vest on the Marianne statue and hung a banner reading “The police mutilate high-schoolers.”

A school revolt and a fuel revolt merged

Pupils at a Créteil lycée, a French secondary school for students typically aged 15 to 18, began blockading in mid-September over teacher shortages, classes of 32 to 36, deteriorating buildings and stress over Parcoursup, and the university admissions platform.

Classrooms had reached 40 degrees Celsius over the summer. By Oct. 1, 1,027 of roughly 3,700 lycées were affected.

A separate revolt started Sept. 15, when fishermen blocked ports at Nice and Sète. Diesel climbed to a record of about 2.41 euros a liter after the Strait of Hormuz was closed in the war that the United States and Israel launched against Iran on Feb. 28.

On Saturday the two grievances marched together, joined by university students, the CGT, teachers’ unions, former yellow vests, farmers, truckers, nurses and climate activists.

Student representatives want 10 billion euros for education. The unions want a 6 percent public-sector raise after a fourth freeze of the pay index, which has been frozen since July 2023.

La France Insoumise, a left-wing party founded by Jean-Luc Mélenchon that advocates wealth redistribution and expanded public services, says it backs the movement without running it. Matignon, the prime minister’s office, calls the school protests an operation by the party and its allies.

A Le Figaro poll found 62 percent of respondents call the student cause justified, while 61 percent say the party is too involved. The masked groups that have fought police have published no demands.

 Police have arrested thousands of minors, maimed some

The Justice Ministry counted 6,877 custodies by Oct. 9, 86 percent of them minors. That is already more than 60 percent of the 11,203 that Amnesty recorded across the entire yellow vest movement. The police watchdog has 24 investigations open.

The injuries are specific. A 15-year-old lost his left hand to a grenade in Lens on Oct. 5. A 16-year-old lost the use of an eye in Tours. A 14-year-old’s jaw was shattered in Saint-Ouen-l’Aumône.

On Saturday, a 17-year-old reportedly lost a hand in Saint-Étienne, and Interior Minister Nuñez declined to confirm what caused it. Amnesty called the force disproportionate.

Nuñez suspended one type of stun grenade at school protests on Oct. 7. He re-authorized them Oct. 16 for “urban violence.”

A government that has routinely lectured nations such as Iran on how to treat young demonstrators now runs the arrest statistics described above. Nuñez himself reports more than 500 injured police, gendarmes and firefighters on Saturday, against the 150 Lecornu cited that night.

 A weakened government and protests spreading abroad

President Emmanuel Macron’s approval rating stands at a record low of 15 percent in the Ipsos BVA-CESI poll. Lecornu has 22 percent positive and 69 percent negative, and his government holds 211 of 577 Assembly seats.

The 10-year bond yield touched 5.03 percent in early October, the highest in over two decades. Debt is about 3.6 trillion euros, and interest payments next year will be at least 90 billion. Mujtaba Rahman of Eurasia Group sees a crisis of liberal democracy, a fiscal crisis and a youth crisis arriving together.

Prime Minister Lecornu says France has reached a “point of no return” and told the country it is time to “choose sides.” Jean-Luc Mélenchon replied that the prime minister is “responsible for the chaos.”

Marine Le Pen says social demands were “taken hostage by the extreme left.” She leads the first-round polling for April 18 at 35 percent, ahead of Édouard Philippe at 15 and Mélenchon at 14, according to Ifop.

The remedies so far have been small. Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu released 10 million barrels of diesel from reserves after the G7 agreed to free 100 million, and he has promised 3,000 substitute teachers.

Student leaders call it insufficient. The CGT has called an interprofessional strike for Nov. 5, and firefighters have a strike notice running to Oct. 20. AFP judged Saturday more intense than the 2023 riots and the 2018 yellow vest unrest.

Elsewhere in Europe, police fired tear gas and water cannon in Brussels and Liège.

A march against wars and rising living costs in Milan ended in looting and fires, and Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said, “Demonstrating is a right. Setting our cities ablaze is not.”

Tens of thousands marched in Lisbon over housing and wages. HEC Paris professor Alberto Alemanno calls France the epicenter of separate movements with shared grievances, and sees early stirrings in Greece, Germany and Austria.

Donald Trump declared on Truth Social that “France is burning” and blamed immigration, urging Paris to “close your Borders.” He did not mention schools, diesel prices or his own war of choice behind them.

On October 6, Tehran summoned France’s ambassador. Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei pointed to a glaring double standard, noting that while French officials championed unrest in Iran as a “peaceful uprising,” they quickly branded domestic student demonstrations as criminal “urban violence.” While arson and attacks on police cannot be justified, Baqaei emphasized, “The problem is the double standards.”