Listen to this articleEstimated 4 minutesThe audio version of this article is generated using AI-based technology. Pronunciation errors may occur. We are working with our partners to continually review and improve results. A teenager’s hand was torn off when protesters at a secondary school clashed with riot police in northern France on Monday, a local official said, on the eve of a national demonstration by the pupils’ union against lack of funding, overcrowding and dilapidation. detonated in the city of Lens as the wave of school protests entered its third week. François-Xavier Lauch, prefect of Pas-de-Calais, declined to comment on the exact circumstances, saying that between 200 and 250 protesters had been throwing objects at police. Far-left legislators and mayors from France Insoumise (LFI) of stoking the protests, an accusation the LFI denies. Human rights groups accuse police of using heavy-handed tactics against minors, including batons, tear gas and other riot weapons. Among several investigations into police methods, authorities are examining the case of a 16-year-old boy who suffered an eye injury after police fired rubber bullets into a crowd. The protesters, according to their friends.The LFI, led by presidential candidate Jean-Luc Melenchon, denies encouraging violence and accuses the government of politicizing the issue and neglecting the interests of students.Firefighters arrive to extinguish a fire in front of the Jean-Louis Cyffle secondary school in Nancy, France, on Monday, on the sidelines of national protests by high school students over learning conditions. (Jean-Christophe Verhaegen/AFP/Getty Images) The protests have put more pressure on a government trying to reduce a budget deficit as investor concerns grow about states’ finances, briefly raising the yield on France’s 10-year bond to a 24-year high, up more than five percent last week and raising the likely cost of future borrowing. declining ahead of Tuesday’s national protest. Protests began in September in Paris, focusing on disadvantaged suburbs, before spreading. The government says they have been kidnapped and transformed into urban violence. “Our priority is to restore order,” French government spokesperson Maud Bregeon told CNews television. Education Minister Edouard Geffray said 24 schools had been burned or looted and 78 teachers had been injured in the demonstrations. On Monday, BFMTV showed images of police and students clashing in Lille in northern France, of tear gas in Toulouse in the southwest, and of a fire starting as people tried to break into a school in central Paris. “Shocked,” Carole Zerbib, director of Paris’s vandalized Lycée Vauquelin, said it had been attacked by a “very determined” hooded and masked group who had tried to break down the front door and then lit a fire, forcing the school to be evacuated and classes to be suspended. “It was very violent and it happened very quickly,” he said, adding that he did not believe the attackers were from the school. Protesters are detained by riot police officers during clashes near the Place de la Bastille in Paris on Monday, while hundreds of secondary schools remained closed. (Lou Benoist/AFP/Getty Images) Since last Monday, 5,000 people, 85 percent of them teenagers, have been arrested and dozens have been injured. Teachers and members of the public have been attacked, while property damage is estimated at millions of euros. Bregeon said the government would fast-track a bill on Oct. 27 to hold young people who have damaged property, or their parents, financially responsible. The CGT union told TF1 television on Monday that its members would attend Tuesday’s demonstrations to protect students. “We are dismayed by what we have seen in the last 10 days and by the unprecedented repression that the government has organized,” he said.
