France suspends stun grenades at student protests after teen loses hand

France's government suspended police use of stun grenades at student protests on Wednesday after a 15 year old lost a hand in the northern town of Lens.

Interior Minister Laurent Nunez announced the suspension, saying there is a strong possibility a police grenade caused the boy's injury on Monday. The ban applies only to the student protests and stays in place until investigators clarify what happened. Eighteen cases have been referred to the national police inspectorate. In a separate case, an officer was charged Tuesday after a 14 year old near Paris lost several teeth when struck by a tear gas grenade.

The suspension is an admission that the policing of the protests has itself become a scandal. Tuesday was the biggest day yet of the student movement: the Interior Ministry counted 266,000 demonstrators nationwide, 56,000 of them in Paris, while organizers claimed 450,000. Police made 488 arrests and 43 security personnel were wounded. On Wednesday more than 500 schools were closed or blockaded, with tear gas fired outside the elite Sciences Po campus in Paris. Twenty four high schools have been damaged by fire or vandalism, leaving about 30,000 students out of in person teaching for weeks.

President Emmanuel Macron convened an emergency meeting Tuesday night with Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu, Nunez and Education Minister Edouard Geffray. Lecornu addresses the nation Wednesday evening on the school crisis and the 2027 budget. The backdrop is grim for the government: Le Monde reported this week that French 15 year olds' reading scores in the 2025 PISA study fell 43 points since 2015, the biggest drop of any OECD country. Meanwhile the budget battle opened in parliament, where the finance committee rejected cutting the 10 percent pension tax break ceiling from 4,439 euros to 3,000 euros. Lecornu's minority government is pushing 43 billion euros in savings to bring the deficit from 5.4 percent of GDP this year to 5 percent next.