About 855 people, a ‘record number ', were arrested in Paris after a day of violent protests in France on Saturday, the Paris police prefecture said.
Several parts of France reported violent incidents of arson, looting and vandalism. In Limges, the city hall was set ablaze The Marseille’s mayor's office was also attacked, and the area around the Élysée Palace was surrounded.
Officials say that the intensity of the clashes caught the authorities off guard.
The unrest included student groups, teachers' unions, and the yellow vest coalition. In Paris alone, 500,000 people gathered for the demonstrations.
The blaze at the historic building in Limoges was contained on Sunday morning, according to the prefect of Haute-Vienne, Maurice Barate.
"The firefighters are currently extinguishing the last embers," he stated, denouncing the fire as arson. "The fire was deliberately set," he asserted, condemning those responsible for the blaze. The prefect said that the historic part of the building was almost 100 per cent destroyed.
In Limoges, about 5000 people participated in the protests. Violent clashes broke out between the protesters and the police near the town hall.
The windows of the building were broken before it was set on fire.
According to a statement from Limoges Public Prosecutor Émilie Abrantes. 17 people were taken into police custody, including 7 minors.
The Limoges public prosecutor's office has opened an investigation into the "destruction of property by dangerous means as part of an organised group."
In Paris, the mobilised forces dealt with an unpredictable situation as they were organised at the last minute, Le Monde reported.
The forces responded to the crowd with tear gas, water cannons and mass arrests.
The Paris prefecture said that 13 police officers and gendarmes were injured, as well as two firefighters.
They said that the violent groups were of usual size and had about 500 to over 1000 members. The assessment of damage and looting of businesses is ongoing, but "the extent of the damage observed is significant," the prefecture said.
Streets were littered in Paris after overnight looting and chaos.
Hundreds of institutions and businesses were targeted, and the city streets are filled with broken shop window glass and burnt two-wheelers.
Several violent groups carried out numerous looting operations in République, Sébastopol, Madeleine and Faubourg Saint-Honoré sectors.
Paris police prefecture said that in a "new phase” they noted the arrival of individuals, “whose sole objective was to commit robberies and looting”.
Shop owners reported masked men with baseball bats smashing shop windows. They also carried bags and stole products prodicts in bulk from the stores.
The deputy mayor of Paris said, on Franceinfo, “We have a city in a state of total disrepair; it's absolutely dramatic."
In the aftermath, former president François Hollande called for negotiations between the youth organisation and the trade union.
He said that he believes that it is now up to "the public authorities to open serious negotiations with youth organisations and with trade union federations on the themes which justified the scale of the demonstrations".
He called on the government to "bring together political forces determined to act together against violence and find common answers on the issue of maintaining order," in the aftermath of the looting that marred several major cities.
