Update: More Than 410,000 March Across France: Clashes at Paris March Endpoint as Police Use Tear Gas and Water Cannons in Several Cities

France held a new round of nationwide protests on Saturday, October 24, the second consecutive Saturday of large-scale mobilisation. According to the Associated Press, the Interior Ministry put turnout at 410,000 across the country, including 110,000 in Paris, while the CGT trade union, one of the organisers, put the figures at nearly 800,000 nationwide and 250,000 in Paris. The protests centred on school funding and conditions and the rising cost of living.

The authorised Paris march was confined to the south-eastern edge of the city, from Porte d'Italie to Porte de Vincennes, away from the central neighbourhoods hit by destruction last weekend. The march was largely peaceful, but near its endpoint some demonstrators threw projectiles and tried to continue towards Place de la Nation before police blocked their path and fired volleys of tear gas and used water cannons to disperse them. The Paris prosecutor's office said 64 people were arrested in the capital and 40 placed in police custody, including six minors, most on suspicion of weapons offences or participation in a group preparing violence or property damage.

Clashes also broke out in other cities. According to AP and French media reports, police used tear gas in Lyon, Clermont-Ferrand and Strasbourg and water cannons in Nice and Nantes, and fired tear gas during clashes near the march endpoint in Marseille. Nearly 10,000 people marched in Lyon despite a ban on gatherings in the city centre, authorities in Toulouse counted about 26,500 demonstrators, and in Nantes protesters who tried to cross the Loire into the banned city centre were met with water cannon and tear gas. Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez said earlier in the day that 135 people had been arrested nationwide and that checks had seized metal balls, lead pellets, fireworks, slingshots, steel balls, improvised weapons, a katana and airsoft weapons.

The government deployed 70,000 police officers and gendarmes nationwide, backed by helicopters, armoured vehicles and water cannons. GSM previously reported that major Paris museums including the Louvre and the Musée d'Orsay were closed on Saturday as authorities prepared for the protests, and that Art Basel Paris had cancelled its weekend programme.

The movement began last month over staff shortages at a high school south-east of Paris and has spread nationwide, with students demanding better schools and workers seeking higher wages and pensions. Energy prices in France were 21.3 percent higher in September than a year earlier, helping drive overall inflation to 3.1 percent, according to the national statistics agency INSEE. President Emmanuel Macron met high school representatives on Friday; the students said he promised to overhaul university admissions, but called for protests to continue until concrete measures are announced. Yellow vest organisers have called another day of protests on October 31. More than 500,000 people took to the streets last Saturday, October 17, when some 3,000 shops across France were damaged or looted over that weekend.

Source: GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)

Photo: 资料图：2026年10月17日，法国南部 Aix-en-Provence，学生与民众在全国生活成本抗议动员中游行（同属本轮抗议潮，非10月24日现场）。照片：Gabriel from92，CC0 1.0，经 Wikimedia Commons。/ File photo: Students and residents march in Aix-en-Provence, southern France, on October 17, 2026, during the nationwide cost-of-living protests (same protest wave; not a scene from October 24). Photo: Gabriel from92, CC0 1.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

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