Barricades on fire, charges from the police, arrests… The rally initially organized on the Place de la Concorde in Paris this Thursday degenerated in the early evening, Thursday, and spread to other streets of the capital , after the intervention of the police to try to disperse the thousands of demonstrators opposed to the pension reform, gathered to castigate the use of 49.3 by the government earlier in the afternoon.
According to the police headquarters, the police went into action, in particular with water cannons, after an attempt to degrade the Obelisk site, in the center of the square. Their charges and the use of tear gas drove the protesters away from the bridge that leads to the National Assembly, and pushed them back across the square, where they entered other streets.
VIDEO. Spontaneous rallies in France after the announcement of the use of 49.3 for pension reform
At least 120 people arrested
At 11:30 p.m., 217 people had been arrested, in particular for participating in a group to commit damage, said the police headquarters. The firefighters intervened to extinguish several fire starts on the site of the Obelisk, place de la Concorde, in particular on boards and an excavator.
According to a journalist from BFMTV, demonstrators would have entered the Jardin des Tuileries and would have recovered metal chairs there, before throwing them in the direction of the police.
Images posted on social networks also show barricades in streets adjacent to Place de la Concorde. Garbage cans were set on fire in the surrounding streets, said the police headquarters. A “wild” procession notably headed for rue Saint-Honoré.
The first demonstrators had gathered in the square in the middle of the afternoon, at the call of the Solidaires union, when Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne had just announced to the deputies that she was engaging the responsibility of her government. to push through his contested reform. They were joined shortly after 4:30 p.m. by protesters massed near the Palais-Bourbon and a procession of more than 1,600 young people from the Place de la Sorbonne.