PARIS
\nFrench police \u201clost control\u201d during nationwide protests marred by violence over the weekend, the interior minister admitted Monday, with President Emmanuel Macron calling for a security review. Macron also refused Interior Minister Laurent Nunez\u2019s resignation even as he acknowledged security and intelligence failures in the government response.
\nSaturday\u2019s demonstrations saw some half a million people turn out across France to protest the cost of living, but morphed into some of the worst violence to rock the country in years, with town halls and shops looted and set ablaze.
\nMore than 2,500 people were arrested, while almost 1,000 members of the security forces were injured. Injuries were also reported among protesters, with one demonstrator\u2019s hand blown off by a police crowd-control grenade.
\n\u201cOn Saturday, in some major cities, you couldn\u2019t look shopkeepers in the eye after hundreds of shops had been looted and tell them we hadn\u2019t lost control,\u201d Nunez said.
\nNunez acknowledged a \u201clack of anticipation\u201d in the deployment of security forces on Saturday, whose numbers were insufficient to deal with the large crowds of rioters and looters on the fringes of the demonstrations.
\nHe estimated that some 60,000 law enforcement personnel had been deployed across the country that day. \u201cGiven the damage that has been caused, it was only right that I should hand in my resignation,\u201d Nunez said.
\nThe presidency said in a statement that Macron had rejected the resignation, however, citing \u201cthe necessity for continued leadership of law enforcement\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
PARIS French police \u201clost control\u201d during nationwide protests marred by violence over the weekend, the interior minister admitted Monday, with President Emmanuel Macron calling for a security review. Macron also refused Interior Minister Laurent Nunez\u2019s resignation even as he acknowledged security and intelligence failures in the government response. Saturday\u2019s demonstrations saw some half a million …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":104577,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-104561","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104561","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=104561"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104561\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":104586,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104561\/revisions\/104586"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/104577"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=104561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=104561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=104561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}