PARIS, Dec 2: French Interior Minister Christophe on Saturday night said that 288 people have been arrested in the yellow vest protests in Paris and some 100 people injured, one of them a demonstrator who is in extremely serious condition.
"All the police, the gendarmes and civil security forces were mobilised today," Castaner said, adding that 65,000 agents had been deployed around the country and 4,000 in Paris, a number that proved insufficient to deal with the 3,000 violent protesters identified by the authorities.
The Interior Minister announced that authorities have recovered control of the Arc de Triomphe, occupied and damaged by the rioters, Efe reported.
"I am shocked by the challenge against symbols of France," Prime Minister Edouard Philippe said earlier. "The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier encircled, the Arc de Triomphe daubed," he added.
The arch was spattered with yellow paint saying, "The 'yellow vests' will triumph" and later a group of demonstrators managed to get access to the top of the monument.
The protest was dubbed the "gilets aunes" or yellow vest movement owing to the high-visibility protective clothing worn by its adherents.
The prime minister said some protesters had wielded weapons such as hammers and the number of those who had participated in the mobilisations called by the yellow vests against the rise of fuel taxes and a loss in the acquisitive power of their wages had reached some 5,500 in Paris and 36,000 in France as a whole. - IANS
