France counts 2,000 arrests as 400 high schools stay shut on the third day

French police had arrested about 2,000 people by Friday, most of them teenagers, since high school protests over classroom conditions turned into street clashes. Interior accounts put the figure at that level across the week. Education Minister Édouard Geffray said 400 high schools were closed on Friday, about one in ten, and that 65 education staff had been injured, including 40 headteachers. A separate count used by the BBC put the number of disrupted schools above 700. In Belfort, a 17-year-old was arrested on suspicion of attempted homicide after a police officer was beaten near a school.

The protests began over missing teachers, crowded classes and worn buildings. By Friday they were a policing problem in Strasbourg, Marseille, Rennes and the Paris suburb of Pantin, and a political problem inside a crisis meeting that intelligence services used to name La France Insoumise.

What Friday looked like on the street

Reuters reported tear gas in Strasbourg, fireworks thrown at police lines in Marseille, and rubbish bins set on fire in Rennes. In Pantin, protesters set fences alight and threw firecrackers at riot police, then ran. The BBC said police charged protesters in Pantin after projectiles were thrown. Geffray told BFMTV that teachers had described people in front of them who were not their students. He said the movement had been taken over by people who do not attend the schools.

Several students in the Paris region told Reuters they were staying away on Friday because of the violence. That split matters for the arrest figure. If most of the 2,000 people in custody are teenagers, as Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin told RTL, the custody file is still a school-age file even if some of the people on the street are not enrolled. Darmanin said parents of those who damage property should pay for it. He did not publish a breakdown of how many of the 2,000 were charged, released, or held.

Belfort, and the officer on video

The Belfort case is the sharpest criminal fact of the day. A 17-year-old was arrested on suspicion of attempted homicide. BBC Verify authenticated two videos of a man, later identified by a minister as a police officer, being beaten near a school. Attempted homicide is a different charge from the vandalism and public-order offences that make up a mass arrest figure. One case does not describe 2,000. It does set the top of the charge sheet, and it gives the interior ministry a picture it will use in the next briefing.

The intelligence claim, and the reply

At a crisis meeting, intelligence services told ministers the protests had been started by politicians from La France Insoumise, the hard-left party led in parliament by figures who rejected the claim. Senior LFI lawmakers said the government was politicising the unrest ahead of an election. Geffray, who comes from the right, has used the same framing in public: outside takeover, not a pupil grievance.

The grievance is documented without that claim. Unions including SNEP-FSU, SNUEP-FSU and Solidaires called on members to support the pupils. Their demand is staffing and buildings. The government's demand on Friday was that parents keep children at home. Both can be true on the same day. A movement about headteacher injuries and a movement about an opposition party are not the same briefing, and the Élysée held both.

President Emmanuel Macron's ministers have now had three days of closures. An earlier count put arrests above 1,000 after two days. Friday's 2,000 is the cumulative figure Darmanin used, not a single-day total. The 400 closed schools are Friday's number. The 65 injured staff are the education ministry's number, with headteachers as the largest group inside it. Those three figures are the ones a later inquiry can check. The claim that LFI started the marches is an intelligence assessment read out in a closed meeting, and the party has denied it.

Monday will show whether the one-in-ten closure rate holds. If parents follow Geffray's request, the street gets thinner and the staffing dispute remains. If they do not, Darmanin's custody count keeps rising, and the Belfort charge will not be the last of its kind on the sheet.