French prosecutors open 'attempted murder' probe after rioters set a police officer alight 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.
The injured gendarme, speaking to RTL without being identified, described the liquid spreading across his skin and said the burning was "immediate, intense" and impossible to stop. France's interior minister Laurent Nuñez labelled the Molotov cocktail attack "attempted murder" as Paris prosecutors launched a formal criminal investigation. Across France, more than 770 people were arrested after 320,000 protesters — among them some dressed in Halloween costumes — filled the streets for a third straight weekend of disorder. The unrest spilled beyond France's borders, with Swiss security forces pelted with paving stones, Portuguese police dispersing camps with baton charges, and riots breaking out in several German cities.
The injured officer said: 'I felt the flammable substance spreading on my skin, wondering when it would stop.'
The unrest began with school students demanding £9bn in education funding and grew into a broader cost-of-living revolt.
Germany's interior minister demanded tough sentences following violence that broke out in multiple German cities in the wake of the protests.
