The French government points to “ultra-left” militants as responsible for the violence in the protests

The prime minister defends that demonstrating is a right, but condemns the violence of the protests, which leaves 172 detainees

March 23 () –

The French Interior Minister, Gérald Darmanin, has assured this Thursday that the profile of a violent protester during the general strike against the pension reform, which has resulted in 172 arrests so far, is a militant of the “ultra-left”.

“We were able to document that the ultra-left is behind a large part of the violent demonstrations, which I do not want to confuse with peaceful demonstrations,” he pointed out, denouncing the “cynicism” of sectors of the extreme left, which, according to him, have made calls to violence.

Of the total number of arrests, 77 have been registered in Paris for acts of looting, arson or violence against the security forces. Likewise, there are at least 50 fires in progress in the capital and 140 have been extinguished during the day.

Darmanin, who went to Police headquarters tonight to assess the damage during the protests, has also reported that 149 officers have been injured in different French cities, according to the newspaper ‘Le Parisien’.

For her part, the French Prime Minister, Elisabeth Borne, has called both “violence” and “degradation” during the protests “unacceptable”, assuring, however, that demonstrating is a right. “All my thanks to the mobilized police and rescue forces,” she said on her official Twitter profile.

The clashes have been especially intense at night in Bordeaux, where protesters have burned the entrance to the City Hall and there have been police charges to disperse the crowd. The protests have also been violent in Lyon, where groups of hooded men have thrown bottles armed with iron bars.

The same scene of a pitched battle has been repeated in Grenoble or Toulouse, a city where protesters have set public furniture on fire and painted graffiti on the walls against the pension reform.