Monday 2 November 2026
Paris prosecutors open an attempted murder investigation into the Porte de Charenton firebombing, and the weekend arrest total lands at 779
Paris prosecutors opened an investigation on Sunday for the attempted murder of persons vested with public authority, after explosive devices were thrown at about 15 gendarmes and police officers at the end of Saturday's march at Porte de Charenton. One device exploded at a gendarme's feet and set his protective equipment alight. Prosecutors said the reported injuries include second degree burns and tinnitus and that the count of the injured was still being established. Investigators said they had singled out three people dressed in black, in the style of black bloc protesters, from video and photographs. No one had been arrested for the attack itself as of Sunday. The Interior Ministry put the nationwide arrest total for the demonstrations and Halloween night at 779, with 105 of them in Paris.
Interior Minister Laurent Nunez had already given the attack its legal name on Saturday night, calling the throwing of a Molotov cocktail at the gendarme an attempted murder. The prosecutors' office has now made it a case. The Paris police prefecture said several hundred rioters attacked the security forces with projectiles at the march's end. The gendarme whose equipment caught fire described his burns to French television. His unit had been recalled from leave ahead of the protests.
The weekend's final numbers are smaller than the two Saturdays before them. The ministry counted 320,000 demonstrators nationwide, with the organisers putting the figure far higher, and the 779 arrests replaced the provisional count of 565 given on Saturday evening. Paris prosecutors broke the capital's 105 arrests into 88 tied to the demonstrations and 17 to Halloween night. The previous Saturday's mobilisation produced 1,314 arrests, and the first weekend, on October 17 and 18, produced 2,628, according to the figures reported from the ministry. The street movement is shrinking in size. The case now open in Paris is about the one act from Saturday that does not shrink with it: a firebomb thrown into a line of police, which the state is treating as an attempt to kill.
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