Live: Around 1,500 shops and retailers damaged during French protests, trade group says
Özet haber: Roughly 1,500 shops and retailers were damaged during the demonstrations that swept France on the weekend, many of them looted, the head of the Retail and Trade Federation said Sunday. Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez said that police had arrested more than 1,800 people as outbursts of arson and looting broke out on the margins of peaceful marches. Follow out liveblog for the latest updates.
Around 1,500 shops and retailers were damaged in French protests on the weekend, with many of them looted, the head of a group representing the sector said. The cost to the establishments will run to "several hundreds of millions of euros", Alexandre Bompard, president of the Retail and Trade Federation, told LCI television, adding it was too early to give an exact figure.
French Prime Sébastien Lecornu will hold an interministerial crisis meeting at 7PM, saying that the meeting will focus on "the economy and commerce", "insurance" and "legal proceedings" in the wake of widespread vandalism and looting that broke out on the margins of Saturday's demonstrations.
The prime minister's office also announced that Lecornu will meet with the mayors of Paris, Marseille and Lyon at a date still to be determined.
French Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez said that more than 500 police, gendarmes and firefighters had been injured during Saturday's protests, adding that the toll remained provisional.
There have been no estimates of how many demonstrators have been injured during the violent clashes between police and protesters that broke out on the margins of the peaceful marches, although a 17-year-old boy in Saint-Etienne had his hand blown off by a stun grenade fired by police.
FRANCE 24 international affairs editor Shirli Sitbon breaks down what we know about the people who showed up for Saturday's nationwide protests – peaceful or otherwise.
Police arrested more than 1,800 during French protests, interior minister says
French Green Party leader Marine Tondelier called for Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez to resign, slamming the law enforcement response to Saturday's nationwide protests as an "absolute disaster"." Unable to anticipate an adequate security setup guaranteeing the safety of people and property, Laurent Nuñez is clearly overwhelmed by the situation, whose scale he has evidently underestimated," she wrote on social media.
She accused the minister of leaving whole cities "abandoned to rioters" while police assaulted peaceful demonstrators.
More than 500 people were being held in police custody after a "record number" of arrests during Saturday's protests in Paris, the public prosecutor's office said. Of those in custody, 346 were adults and 171 were minors, for a total of 517, the prosecutor's office said, adding that the numbers were provisional and could change.
Most of the arrests were for receiving stolen goods, association with intent to commit violence and vandalism, it said.
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