France spent Sunday assessing the damage from a night of rioting that authorities say produced 1,800 arrests, destroyed a historic town hall and left a Paris synagogue vandalized, The Times of Israel reported, citing French officials and wire reports. "It's like we had a war," one 78-year-old Paris resident, Mehmet Ozeden, said as he surveyed burnt-out barricades near his home.
President Emmanuel Macron was due to address the nation Sunday evening, while Interior Minister Laurent Nunez said investigators would work to identify and prosecute those responsible. Paris alone accounted for 855 arrests amid torched vehicles and gutted storefronts, with deputy mayor Lamia El Aaraje saying the city had seen a level of violence she could not recall witnessing before.
Roughly 1,500 businesses across Paris, Marseille, Bordeaux, Nice and Strasbourg were looted or damaged, with losses estimated in the hundreds of millions of euros, according to the country's Retail and Trade Federation. In Limoges, a 19th-century town hall was burned down by what a local official called "a wild horde," while Lyon's mayor described hours of chaos in his city.
Among the reported damage, video circulating on social media showed a synagogue on Paris's Rue Burnouf vandalized, its ritual items scattered, though no injuries were reported there. Around 550,000 people took part in the broader, largely peaceful demonstrations over the cost of living nationwide, according to the interior ministry, even as the violent fringe left roughly 500 police, firefighters and paramedics injured, including a 17-year-old who lost a hand to a crowd-control grenade in Saint-Étienne.
