Violence flares up as yellow vestprotests enter 4th month in France
18 March, 2019
Rioters set fire to a bank and ransacked stores on Paris’ Champs Elysees avenue on Saturday, in a new flare-up of violence as France’s yellow vest protests against French President Emmanuel Macron and his pro-business reforms entered a fourth month.
Police fired tear gas and water cannon as the protests turned violent after weeks of relative calm, during which marches had attracted declining numbers of participants.
A Banque Tarneaud branch spewed flames before firefighters arrived and rescued a woman and her infant from the building, with 11 suffering minor injuries, the fire department said.
Rioters also set fire to an upmarket handbag store and two newsstands on the Champs Elysees, while scattered bonfires burned on the thoroughfare.
Protesters hurled cobblestones at riot police through clouds of tear gas in front of the Arc de Triomphe monument, which was ransacked at the peak of the protests in December.
Police arrested nearly 240 protesters as rioters looted stores around the Champs Elysees and wrecked the high-end Fouquet’s restaurant.
The canvas awning of the swanky brasserie, known in France as the place where conservative Nicolas Sarkozy celebrated his presidential election victory in 2007, was later set on fire.
Macron cut short a weekend ski trip in the Pyrenees to return to the capital on Saturday night for a crisis meeting with ministers.
“We are attached to constitutional rights, but we’ve got people who through all means quite simply want to make a wreck of the republic, to break things and destroy, running the risk of getting people killed,” Macron said.
“I want us to very precisely analyze things and as quickly as possible take strong, complementary decisions so this doesn’t happen again,” he told ministers.
Police said 42 protesters, 17 of their own officers and one firefighter were injured.
The Interior Ministry estimated 10,000 people had participated in the protest in Paris, compared with 3,000 on the previous Saturday. Nationwide, protesters were estimated at 32,300, compared with 28,600 a week earlier.
French Interior Minister Christophe Castaner said that although the protest was relatively small, there had been more than 1,500 “ultraviolent” people out looking for trouble.
“They decided, perhaps as a swansong, to come attack — and I use their words — Paris,” Castaner said, adding that more than 1,400 police officers were mobilized.
A separate, peaceful march against climate change through central Paris drew as many 36,000 people, police estimated. Some 145,000 people marched nationwide.
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