France protests put 70,000 security forces on alert

France will deploy about 70,000 security personnel on Saturday as it prepares for new nationwide protests after violence and looting broke out during demonstrations the previous weekend, Interior Minister Laurent Nunez said.

Shops and restaurants in central Paris were boarded up, the Louvre and Musee d'Orsay were closed and a curfew was in place for parts of the capital. Hundreds of demonstrations were planned across the country.

The protests began with high school students demonstrating over learning conditions and have widened into broader anger over the rising cost of living. More than half a million people joined demonstrations last weekend, when some of the worst urban violence in years erupted on the sidelines.

Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu warned Friday that the threat of violence “remains high”. Officials said courts had already sent 217 people, half of them first-time offenders, to prison over last Saturday's events.

Authorities also imposed restrictions on protests. In Orleans, where Marine Le Pen is due to host her National Rally party congress, a counter-demonstration expected to draw 20,000 to 30,000 people will be barred from the city centre, the prefecture said. Central areas of Lyon will also be off-limits to demonstrators this weekend.

In Paris, police changed the route approved for a union-led march between Bastille and Nation squares, but unions said they would push ahead with the banned route because of safety concerns. Marseille authorities said a union-organised demonstration would be allowed on an “exceptional basis” after earlier banning protests.

Amnesty International criticised the restrictions as “a slide toward authoritarian practice”. Human Rights Watch researcher Eva Cosse said police had a duty to allow peaceful protest while protecting the public from violent disorder, and voiced alarm over reports of children being severely injured by crowd-control weapons.

The protests come six months before elections to replace President Emmanuel Macron. The item said a new poll showed Le Pen as the frontrunner.