France to deploy 70,000 police ahead of new protests

France will deploy some 70,000 police nationwide as it braces for new protests this weekend after some of the worst urban violence in years erupted on the sidelines of demonstrations a week ago, the government said Friday.
Interior Minister Laurent Nunez confirmed the development at a press conference in Paris.
President Emmanuel Macron, who according to aides is postponing a visit later this month to Nigeria and Senegal amid the crisis, held a meeting of his defence council of top ministers and officials and was to meet security forces.
“We will present our demands to him—which remain the same: the state of school infrastructure and an overhaul of the Parcoursup (university admissions) system,” Nathanael Combary, president of Renouveau Lyceen (High School Renewal) told AFP.
Macron’s government has sought to draw a line between the legitimate demands of protesters and the looting, burning and ransacking that erupted on the sidelines of protests last Saturday. In a judicial response of unprecedented firmness, courts have already sent 217 people, half of them first-time offenders, to prison over the events on Saturday, Justice Minister Gerald Darmanin said.
On Thursday, Macron called for “the utmost severity” against “acts of delinquency”, accusing “ultra-left” groups of having sought to “bring down the republic” last weekend.
He was also set to host for the first time representatives of high school pupils, whose protests over conditions at their schools sparked the movement that has broadened into a nationwide show of anger against the government at the rising cost of living.
The protests have come at a critical moment for France six months ahead of elections to replace Macron, with a new poll underlining far-right candidate Marine Le Pen is the frontrunner and showing her position has been strengthened by the latest events. Adding to tensions, Le Pen is at the weekend due to host her National Rally (RN) party congress in Orleans, with thousands of supporters expected but local authorities fearing clashes as opponents head to the city.
Meanwhile,a gunman opened fire from a car west of Paris, killing one person and wounding four others including a 12-year-old girl on Friday, French authorities said.
“We would like to thank our law enforcement agencies, which have already taken the suspect into custody. The National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office has taken over the case,” President Emmanuel Macron said in a post on X, expressing deep sorrow over the killing, Reuters reports.
A deadly shooting in a town outside Paris on Friday was “a racist, probably Islamophobic attack”, the mayor of Trappes said, as authorities moved to investigate the case as a “terrorist” incident. Interior Minister Laurent Nunez, visiting the area where at least two victims were of foreign origin, said the gunman, who killed one person and wounded five others, “clearly” committed “a terrorist crime”.