France counts the damage: ministry puts arrests at 2,397 and officers injured at 997, with 1,500 businesses hit as the clean up begins

By Sunday the fires were out and the counting had a number on it. Interior Minister Laurent Nunez said more than 2,000 people had been arrested across France and more than 600 police officers, gendarmes and firefighters injured, and he said the injury toll was still provisional, as of October 18. The count kept climbing all weekend as the reports came in. Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu put arrests at some 1,200 late on Saturday. Reuters later reported about 1,800 detained. The minister's Sunday figures were raised again in updated Interior Ministry figures, to 2,397 arrested and 997 police and gendarmes injured, seven of them seriously, as of October 18.

The damage count is its own figure. The retail federation put the number of businesses hit at about 1,500 nationwide, with losses in the hundreds of millions of euros. AFP described the Sunday morning scene in the big cities: shared bicycles burned into twisted metal, cars burned out, storefronts smashed, and luxury and phone shops emptied of their stock.

The looting was not confined to the march routes. AFP reported that shops were attacked in Paris around Place de la Republique and in places kilometres from the authorised demonstrations, where young men smashed windows and emptied stores in front of the cameras without troubling to hide. The minister named the cities where shops were looted: Paris and Marseille, Strasbourg, Rouen, Nantes, Rennes, Toulouse, Pau and Valence.

The buildings of the Republic took their share as well. Protesters forced their way into town halls or prefectures in Marseille, Lille, Angers and Bordeaux and vandalised the interiors. In Lyon an office of the tourist board was set on fire, and in Limoges the city hall burned through the night.

Sunday brought a second day of clashes around Place de la Republique in Paris, where 42 more officers were injured, with smaller clashes and looting in Lyon and Marseille, while the clean up began in the hardest hit streets, and criticism of the police operation grew louder from mayors and opposition parties who asked how so much of the country was left open to looting. The mayors of Paris, Marseille and Lyon, the three largest cities, had already demanded a meeting with the prime minister over the scale of the damage. Lecornu chairs a crisis meeting on Monday on aid for those affected, insurance and the judicial follow up, and the courts have been told to move fast against the violent. Two people are dead, and an inquiry into how the day was policed is under discussion in the National Assembly.