France opens 'attempted murder' probe after rioters set a police officer's leg on fire with a petrol bomb in Paris
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.
France's interior minister, Laurent Nuñez, called the violence "extraordinary" and characterised the petrol bomb assault as "what I call a murder attempt", with prosecutors noting that nobody has yet been arrested over the incident. The gendarme who was set on fire said in an RTL interview that the heat had melted his leg and shin protections, adding that the accelerant was "so greasy I could feel it spreading across my skin". More than 770 people were detained across France on Saturday as 320,000 demonstrators took to streets nationwide for a third straight weekend of protests over rising living costs and deteriorating public services.
Paris prosecutors have identified three suspects wearing black in the style of Black Bloc protesters, but no charges have been brought.
The officer told Le Figaro that his unit had faced "several hundred hostile, well-equipped adversaries" armed with a device of "far greater burning capacity than a standard Molotov cocktail".
Marine Le Pen called for those responsible to be "punished with the utmost severity", while Germany also pledged a firm response to looting and unrest in Frankfurt.
