A police officer’s home in Auch, southwestern France, was destroyed by fire on Saturday in what the authorities believe was a deliberate attack, Interior Minister Laurent Nunez said, as a new weekend of cost-of-living protests drew 146,000 people onto the streets.
“Everything suggests that this intolerable criminal act was committed because of the officer’s profession,” Nunez said. The house was destroyed despite the intervention of firefighters, he said, adding in a post on X that “all necessary resources will be deployed to identify those responsible and bring them to justice.”
The minister did not say whether anyone was hurt in the fire or whether any arrests had been made. The attack has not been independently confirmed as arson: it rests on the authorities’ assessment, and no suspect has been named.
The fire came on a day when the interior ministry said 146,000 people marched across France, with at least 360 arrests and about 70,000 police and gendarmes deployed to prevent a repeat of October’s riots. Officials described the mobilisation as in “net recul” — a clear fall — compared with previous Saturdays, while organisers gave higher turnout figures. Authorities also carried out tens of thousands of preventive checks on transport routes and stations.
The protests, led largely by young people, began in late September over the rising cost of living and the state of public services, particularly schools. A week earlier, on 31 October, the interior ministry put the nationwide turnout at 320,000, with 779 arrests, after a gendarme was set alight by a petrol bomb during clashes in Paris.
Prosecutors in Nantes have separately placed two 16-year-old pupils under formal investigation for deliberately starting the 1 October fire at Lycée Nelson-Mandela, ordering them under judicial supervision, with one sent to a closed educational centre. Prosecutors have appealed against the decision not to place them in pretrial detention.
Investigators say masked youths stacked bins and street furniture at the school entrance and used aerosols and petroleum-based accelerants, causing roughly €4 million in damage that forced the partial closure of the school.
The government has so far given no sign of concessions on the protesters’ demands, and with the unrest now in its seventh week, the pattern of weekend marches, heavy policing and sporadic attacks on officers and property shows little sign of easing.
Sources: Reuters, “Police officer’s home in France destroyed by fire, interior minister says“; Particle News, “Youth Protests Fall as Police Make Hundreds of Arrests and Two Teens Charged Over Nantes Arson“
