Paris prosecutors open 'attempted murder' probe after a French riot officer was set alight by rioters' petrol bomb
Crowds on the streets of Frankfurt on Saturday night, as around 100 rioters — some in Halloween costumes — smashed open storefronts and attacked emergency workers with Molotov cocktails amid a Gen Z cost-of-living protest that drew an estimated 8,000 demonstrators at its peak.A post shared by @NewsFokus on X showing scenes from Frankfurt am Main under the #GenZRegelt hashtag, as France separately banned Halloween masks ahead of fresh protests.Riot police on the streets of Paris. France banned Halloween masks and deployed 70,000 police and gendarmes nationwide amid warnings of "a very high risk of public disorder.Fires and smoke at Porte de Charenton, Paris, as a French officer was treated for severe burns after a Molotov cocktail struck him — an attack France's interior minister described as attempted murder.
The burned officer, speaking anonymously to French radio RTL, described feeling the flammable liquid spread across his skin, saying the sensation was 'immediate, intense' and long-lasting because 'you can't stop it.' France's Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez characterised the petrol bomb attack as attempted murder, and Paris prosecutors have formally opened a criminal investigation. Arrests across the country exceeded 770 as 320,000 demonstrators — some in Halloween costumes — took to the streets for a third consecutive weekend of unrest over cost of living and failing public services.
France deployed 70,000 police officers to contain protests that have now spread to Germany, Switzerland, Portugal and Albania.
Macron's effigy was smashed apart by masked protesters in Paris as rioters wielded hammers to rip up paving stones and launch them at officers.
The injured gendarme, who avoided serious injury, said: 'The flammable substance was so greasy that I felt it spreading on my skin, wondering when it would stop.'
