Paris gendarme who was set alight by a petrol bomb says attackers were 'not protesters' as no one is arrested

Prosecutors in Paris have launched a formal attempted murder investigation after incendiary devices were thrown at a group of around 15 gendarmes and police officers during Saturday's cost-of-living protests. Footage captured a homemade device setting a gendarme's lower body ablaze. The injured officer described a "particularly sophisticated" device with "far greater burning capacity than a standard Molotov cocktail," adding that the flammable substance left a greasy sensation spreading across his skin. Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez characterised the incident as "what I call a murder attempt," and 13 members of the gendarme's unit were injured in total.

Three suspects have been identified — people wearing black in the Black Bloc style — but nobody has been arrested over the firebomb attack.

Marine Le Pen called for those responsible to be "punished with the utmost severity" as arrests over the weekend's protests surpassed 770 across the country.

The targeted officer said his unit found themselves "facing several hundred hostile, well-equipped adversaries" who were "not protesters" but individuals "with the intent to harm."