410,000 Protesters Demand Action in France Amid Violent Unrest

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PARIS — The Post is on the ground Saturday in the City of Love as thousands of protesters take to the streets across France, breaking out into violent riots for a second straight weekend.

Some 70,000 law enforcement officers were deployed countrywide on Saturday, while the Louvre and several other major Paris museums closed in an effort to prevent renewed violence during planned protests.

Last week devolved into mayhem, with people setting fires, storming public buildings, smashing shop windows, looting and clashing with police. It was France’s most violent unrest in years.

Follow The Post’s live updates from Paris as protesters riot across France:

Protesters stormed Paris Saturday to demand the government pay attention to the people's suffering, ralliers cried.

"I came here for my rights because apparently they're still not respected," Kyara Nissan Olivier told The Post as the peaceful protest devolved into chaos in the capital.

"What the police is doing is not legal. I'm scared to protest and that means it's the start of the rise of fascism. I'm here for everything -- at the start it was the high schools, but it's like a snowball causing an avalanche."

Olivier defended last week's looting and violence, saying it was necessary to call attention to the deteriorating quality of life in France.

"The breakage is part of it ... It's not black and white. Violence is a response. There's people who are angry, there's people who have suffered. It's enough. That's it. It's a logical response," she said.

Fellow protester Oussama Mendrek alleged that police were responsible for escalating tensions Saturday.

"They have to raise the minimum wage. Because people are scared of working for nothing. People work and by the end of the month they have nothing to eat," Mendrek said.

Far-left leaders celebrated Saturday's protest in Paris as a “total victory for the social movement.”

Jean-Luc Mélenchon, head of the France Insoumise party, shared a video of the mob peacefully marching through the city in the hours before confrontations with police broke out.

“The march gathered at the newly authorized location and is now moving forward peacefully, stretching over more than four kilometers," Mélenchon said on X.

“The attempts by the Prefect of Police and (Prime Minister Sebastien) Lecornu to incite disorder have failed completely."

“It is time for the authorities to yield; otherwise, the only option left to them will soon be the exit door,” he added.

Mélenchon, who participated in the march, earlier Saturday warned President Emmanuel Macron to give into the nation's demands to invest more in the school systems.

“After that, all he’ll have left is the exit door,” he said.

The peaceful protests in Paris slowly unraveled Saturday evening as clashes between demonstrators and police kicked off.

Rioters began throwing rocks before lobbing smoke grenades on the floor and objects at law enforcement as the sun set shortly before 7 p.m. local time -- and police responded with tear gas.

Post reporter on the ground, Gabrielle Fahmy, equipped herself with riot gear as explosions began sounding in the city.

The authorized Paris protest had been mostly peaceful until its conclusion, when officers turned water cannons on the crowd in an attempt to disperse them.

Protests railing against the high cost of living were not just limited to France Saturday -- with violence erupting in numerous countries across Europe.

In Albania, rioters are setting fire to dumpsters and throwing stones as part of a call for the resignation of Prime Minister Edi Rama.

Police responded with water cannons to disperse demonstrators rallying outside the Ministry of Education in the capital, Tirana.

Similarly, police used water cannons to break up student-made barricades in the streets of Brussels, Belgium, CNN reported.

Protests also broke out in Italy, with stores across Naples, Rome and Milan boarding up their windows in anticipation of the same looting that erupted in France last week.

Roughly 410,000 protesters stormed the streets across the country in a national call to action over declining quality of life and rising cost of living.

The Interior Ministry estimates that the total number of protesters appeared in both sanctioned and illegal rallies throughout the country.

Approximately 110,000 of those demonstrators participated in the legal march in Paris.

That march concluded with police turning water cannons on the crowds in an attempt to thwart the rally from continuing outside of the permitted area.