Paris police use tear gas and water cannon as school protests reach day four

Thousands of secondary and university students gathered at Place de la Bastille in Paris on Thursday, the fourth day of a nationwide wave of protests over school funding, before police moved in with tear gas and a water cannon after some protesters set fires and vandalised bus shelters, Greek outlet Iefimerida and Hungarian outlet Index.hu reported. Paris police said the water cannon was used to keep violent individuals who had targeted officers at bay for more than an hour, and later arranged for protesters to leave the square for Place de la Nation by separate routes.

In northeastern Paris, students blockaded the Hélène Boucher secondary school with rubbish bins before riot police moved in with tear gas, the Daily Mirror reported. Police also deployed tear gas and pepper spray near Sciences Po university as crowds pushed forward during a march from Place de la République towards Bastille, the newspaper said.

The unrest also spread beyond Paris. In Lormont, near Bordeaux, around thirty people broke into a secondary school, starting a fire and ransacking workshops, according to Index.hu. In Saint-Étienne, a school was stormed and its lobby caught fire, a police source told the outlet; in Poitiers, two cars were set alight overnight in a school car park, with the fire spreading to the school's archive. Police detained 13 people in Seine-et-Marne department by late morning, Index.hu reported.

Frédéric Lauze, head of a French police commanders' union, told Le Parisien, as cited by Index.hu, that 715 police and gendarmerie personnel had been injured since the protests began, with more than twenty schools ransacked and forty headteachers assaulted. France's interior ministry has recorded more than 6,600 arrests since the protests began in late September, most of those detained under 18, the Daily Mirror reported. The education ministry said 375 of the country's 3,700 schools were fully or partially closed on Thursday, 30% fewer than on Wednesday.

Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu condemned the violence in a televised address, citing attacks on students, staff and police, arson at schools and lost class time, and criticised politicians using the unrest for electoral purposes, the Daily Mirror reported. Education Minister Édouard Geffray met representatives of the three largest secondary-school student unions on Thursday and promised an emergency plan for replacement teachers and no job cuts in secondary schools, Index.hu reported; his ministry said a government website collecting students' demands had received a large number of proposals within 48 hours. Student and union groups have called a new nationwide protest and strike for 13 October.