FRENCH PROSECUTORS OPEN ATTEMPTED MURDER PROBE INTO PARIS POLICE ATTACK

Prosecutors in France opened an investigation on Sunday into the attempted murder of persons vested with public authority after clashes in Paris. The Paris police prefecture said several hundred people attacked security forces with projectiles, including a Molotov cocktail, on Saturday. Video showed a homemade incendiary device exploding at the feet of a National Gendarmerie officer and setting his lower body on fire. The prosecutor's office stated that assailants threw devices at around 15 gendarmes and police officers. Interior Minister Laurent Nunez called the attack "what I call a murder attempt" and described the violence as "extraordinary".

The gendarme suffered second-degree ankle burns and minor hand injuries during the assault. He said his unit faced several hundred well-equipped adversaries who threw bottles, paving stones, glass shards and firebombs. "The flammable substance was so greasy that I could feel it spreading across my skin," he said, adding that it had a greater burning capacity than a standard Molotov cocktail. He reported that 14 other officers sustained minor to serious wounds after authorities urgently recalled his unit from leave.

Hundreds of thousands of people joined youth-led protests across France on Saturday over living costs and public services, especially schools. Authorities deployed thousands of officers nationwide during the unrest, and police fired tear gas at demonstrators in some cities. The French interior ministry reported more than 770 arrests on Saturday, roughly half the previous week's figure, while police confirmed no arrests for the firebomb attack. Nunez said officers were working to find the perpetrators as police sought to identify the flammable liquid and prosecutors assessed the injured.