The city centres of Paris and Lyon imposed fresh curfews on 20th October after the first quiet night since France’s most destructive riots in years, Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu said, adding that a “massive” security operation was planned for new protests on Saturday. 

The curfew in two designated zones, around Place de la République and the Les Halles shopping district, had restored “public peace” overnight and would stay in place “for as long as necessary,” Paris police said. Other areas hit on Saturday, including the Champs-Elysées and the area around the Saint-Lazare train station and parts of the Rue de Turbigo in central Paris, where protesters erected barricades and set fires, are not included in the curfew zones.

Authorities also imposed a new curfew in the centre of the French city of Lyon, one of the country’s largest, from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m., saying no disturbances had been reported overnight.

Beginning Tuesday night, unaccompanied minors in Marseille, France’s second-largest city, will be put under curfew. Lecornu said the targeted curfews “helped keep last night calm.”

Student unions and groups from the “yellow vest” movement, which staged protests over fuel prices that shook France in 2018 and 2019, have called for another day of protests Saturday.

Sentinelle soldiers who have patrolled French cities since the Islamic State group attacks in 2015 under an anti-terrorism operation will take over the guarding of sensitive sites to free up more police officers and gendarmes for crowd control, Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez told lawmakers Tuesday. 

“The mobilisation (of police forces) for next Saturday will be massive,” Lecornu told the National Assembly, the lower house of the French parliament, without giving figures.

Limoges city hall fire: Suspect arrested

Police arrested a suspect Tuesday in the arson attack that gutted the historic city hall of the central French city of Limoges, Justice Minister Gerald Darmanin said. The suspect was being held in custody and may have had an accomplice, Darmanin said.

The suspect was close to radical environmentalist movements and was on a watchlist of people considered a possible threat to national security, French media reported. Darmanin refused to comment on the suspect’s profile but said far-left groups appeared to have organised attacks on symbols of the state across France.

A video of the 143-year-old building ablaze, and its bell tower crashing down, circulated widely online over the weekend. US Vice President JD Vance shared it on X, blaming immigration for the unrest and writing: “I pray that France, a beautiful country of amazing people, will stop this madness before more of its landmarks burn.” President Donald Trump, who also shared the video, said migrants had “taken over France.”

French officials have instead blamed the violence on far-left groups and opportunistic looters. Some 2,400 people were arrested on Saturday after rioters across cities in France clashed with police, set cars ablaze and stormed public buildings during nationwide protests against the rising cost of living and poor conditions in schools.

Small groups set fire to trash bins, bicycles and other objects in the streets and looted businesses in Paris, Lyon, Marseille and other cities on Sunday evening.

In Paris, a police helicopter circled Place de la République, a central point of the weekend clashes, all night Monday, sweeping the square with a searchlight to make sure the curfew was being observed.

Workers early Tuesday morning used a crane to remove a giant fluorescent yellow vest that had been draped over the statue at the centre of the square, then used pressure washers to blow graffiti off the monument.

Volunteer Louise Belanger, who came to help with the cleanup, said she still could not comprehend the level of violence. Usually, when you are 20, you should be optimistic; you should be starting to build something. You’re just angry and violence; what are you gonna do? “It’s sad for everybody in society,” she said.

Courts vow ‘extremely tough’ reactions

Darmanin said 149 people had been jailed across the country as of Tuesday at noon, speaking in the northern French city of Lille. The Justice Ministry said more than 800 of the nearly 2,400 people arrested since Saturday have been sent to prosecutors, most of them immediately put on trial or ordered to appear at a later hearing.

The city prosecutor’s office said in a statement that around 300 people had been sent before prosecutors after the protests in Paris on Oct. 17 alone.

Darmanin said he had ordered prosecutors to appeal sentences they found too lenient. “It is very rare, if not unheard of, for people with no criminal record to be imprisoned for property crimes,” he said. The French justice system, he argued, will be “extremely firm.”

In Lille, he said, three men aged 20 to 25 with no criminal record were each sentenced to 10 months in jail and immediately jailed for looting a video game store in the old town.

The National Assembly will launch an inquiry into the violence of Oct. 17 and the policing strategy of the authorities, its speaker, Yaël Braun-Pivet, announced, with results expected “by the end of the year.”

Tuesday protests went on, on a smaller scale. Around 400 people, many of them high school and university students, marched in the western city of Rennes and about 750 in Lyon, in pouring rain.