Interior ministry counts 71,500 at Thursday's French school marches, and 504 arrests

France's interior ministry counted 71,500 people in Thursday's school protests, including 24,500 in the Paris march that ended around the Bastille. Police made 504 arrests during the day, and 48 police officers and gendarmes were injured, the ministry told AFP. The figures cover the marches, not the morning count of closed schools.

That morning count had looked quieter. Education ministry figures put school closures at 224 in the morning and 157 by lunch, which left about 96 percent of schools open. The afternoon and evening marches were a different measure. The interior ministry's 71,500 is the day's street total. On Tuesday the same ministry had counted 86,000 marchers outside the Paris region alone, while the CGT union put that geography at 260,000. Thursday's national figure is smaller than Tuesday's provincial count, and it still put a large crowd in the capital on the third week of the movement.

The Paris march was mostly peaceful. The interior ministry said small groups clashed with police in the evening. Outside the capital the day was rougher. Arsonists attacked a police station in Bordeaux. A school in Saint-Etienne was ransacked. A teacher in Toulouse was hit by a demonstrator. In Marseille, police said a teacher at Victor Hugo High School was attacked and had filed a criminal complaint.

Al Jazeera, citing authorities, reported that 375 schools were fully or partly closed on Thursday and that two dozen had been burned or destroyed over the course of the protests. The interior ministry has put cumulative arrests since the movement began at about 6,600, most of them minors. Those running totals sit behind Thursday's 504. They show how long the blockades have already run, and how many of the people taken into custody are still of school age.

The demand from the lycée unions has stayed narrow: more teachers, and buildings that are not overcrowded, freezing in winter, or overheated in summer. University students and some trade unions joined Thursday's marches. Critics, including figures in the government, say far-left and anarchist groups have entered the demonstrations. The interior ministry's account of the Bordeaux arson and the Saint-Etienne ransacking is the part of that argument that can be checked against a police report. The political reading of who organised those acts is not in the arrest figures.

The government answered the morning closures before the evening total was in. After a meeting in Reims, education official Edouard Geffray said absent teachers would be covered under an emergency plan. Student leaders had already called another march for Tuesday. Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu's office had ordered an action plan a day earlier. The cash position of the outgoing Macron government is the constraint on any plan that costs money. Legislative elections are due in April.

Jean-Luc Mélenchon, after the Paris march, said the Bastille had been retaken. The line is a claim about the square, not a count. The count that can be compared with Tuesday is the interior ministry's: 71,500 nationwide, 24,500 in Paris, 504 arrests, 48 officers injured.

Tuesday's call had been for 2 pm at Place de la République. Thursday's main Paris gathering moved to the Bastille. The shift in square did not change the list of complaints. Classrooms, missing teachers, and buildings in poor repair remain the items student groups read out. Whether Geffray's cover plan reduces Monday's closures is the next number the education ministry can publish. The interior ministry's evening total is the number that Thursday actually produced.