French prosecutors have opened an attempted murder investigation after petrol bombs were thrown at security forces during protests in Paris, including an attack that left an officer engulfed in flames.
The investigation was announced on Sunday after the Paris police prefecture said several hundred rioters had attacked officers with projectiles, including Molotov cocktails.
Clashes broke out in Paris and other French cities on Saturday as hundreds of thousands of people joined a third consecutive weekend of demonstrations over rising living costs and deteriorating public services.
Video and photographs from the protests showed a homemade incendiary device exploding at the feet of an officer in protective gear, setting the lower part of his body on fire.
Prosecutors said they had opened an investigation into the “attempted murder of persons vested with public authority”.
“Explosive devices were thrown at around 15 gendarmes as well as police officers,” the prosecutor’s office said.
Gendarmes are military police officers who form part of the French armed forces.
Authorities were still assessing the number and severity of injuries, prosecutors said, with some officers reported to have suffered second-degree burns.
While the unrest was less widespread than the violence seen two weeks earlier, Interior Minister Laurent Nunez described the level of violence carried out by some demonstrators as “extraordinary”.
One gendarme caught up in the clashes said his unit had been “under assault”, with glass bottles, paving stones, shards of glass and firebombs thrown towards officers.
No suspects had been arrested in connection with the petrol bomb attack at the time covered by the report.
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