As night falls on France's protest day, looters and fires follow the marches in Paris, a protester loses a hand in Saint Etienne, and Macron promises punishment

The marches were the day. The fires were the night. Some 550,000 people demonstrated across France on Saturday, including 110,000 in Paris, Interior Minister Laurent Nunez said, in the largest protest day of the autumn, built from high school students, trade unions and revived Yellow Vests marching over school conditions, fuel prices and the cost of living. Organizers put the turnout higher. As dusk fell, protesters in Lille and Marseille were reported breaking into government buildings, and in Paris, as the demonstration ended, groups of young people looted shops and set fires in narrow streets while police answered with tear gas and baton charges.

President Macron spoke late on Saturday. He condemned the sowers of chaos for interfering with peaceful protest and warned that those who have broken, attacked prefectures as well as businesses, and looted even our town halls, will be prosecuted and punished. The Paris Police Prefecture said its officers do not back down in the face of rioters and those who come to attack law enforcement, and that its staff stood their ground with courage and professionalism.

The injury count of this movement grew in a way that will follow the government. A protester in Saint Etienne, about 40 miles southwest of Lyon, lost his hand during a march on Saturday, a police source told BFMTV, the second reported case of a demonstrator losing a hand in this wave of protests. Earlier this month a student in Lens lost his hand after reportedly picking up a grenade. That injury prompted the temporary suspension of one type of police stun grenade. The ban, which still allowed several other grenade types, has now been rescinded. The police response is drawing its own scrutiny: earlier this week a 14 year old boy was left with a fractured jaw, and an officer was filmed using a headlock on a girl in Alencon, a hold now prohibited by law.

Authorities said the vast majority of people demonstrated peacefully on Saturday, according to BFMTV, and solidarity protests by youth activists were held in Belgium, Albania and Italy. Arrests across France had reached at least 400 by the evening, as of October 17, and the government now owns both halves of the day: the hundreds of thousands who marched, and the smaller number who burned. The picture with this story is an illustration, not a photograph.