Tuesday, 02 January 2024 12:17 GMT

Up to 500 French Schools Shut Monday as Violent Protests Rage


(MENAFN) As many as 500 schools across France will shut their doors in whole or in part on Monday as violent student protests continue, the education minister said Sunday.

Between 400 and 500 high schools will see classes “fully or partially suspended” because security conditions “have not been fulfilled,” Edouard Geffray said, according to French media.

Geffray said 24 schools have been “burned or ransacked” since students began protesting to demand better learning conditions.

He said the movement has been taken over from within. “There are activists – particularly from the far-left – who have infiltrated the high school student movement, hijacked it from the students themselves, and engaged in extreme violence,” Geffray said.

The minister warned that the demonstrations endanger both staff and students. He said 78 education staff members have been wounded, “something we have never seen before.”

The latest figures show more than 5,000 people have been arrested since the unrest began, 85% of them minors.

Several student organizations, backed by left-wing and far-left political groups, have called for a second round of mobilization on Oct. 6 against what they described as police “repression.”

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