More than 5,000 people have been arrested since Monday amid ongoing student protests across France, Interior Minister Laurent Nunez said Friday.

Speaking on the TF1 channel, Nunez said “urban violence” was recorded near 158 establishments amid violent student protests across the country, which have led to more than 5,000 arrests.

He also announced that 735 schools had been affected and 1,747 arrests made, adding that the mobilization was “surprising” in its “scale.”

Hundreds of schools stayed closed or were disrupted while mass arrests and injuries were reported across France on Friday as student protests over better learning conditions continued for weeks.

The minister said projectiles were thrown and police officers, teachers, journalists, and passersby were attacked.

On Thursday, 900 protests were reported outside schools and nearly 2,000 arrests were made, according to authorities, with over 300 police officers and gendarmes also injured.

Several organizations representing the student movement, together with left-wing and far-left political groups, have called for a second round of mobilization on Oct. 6 against what they described as police “repression.”

Student loses use of eye

A 16-year-old student who was injured during protests in Tours, a city in central France, has lost the use of one eye, according to a France Info report.

The tenager was wounded by an LBD-40, known as a Lanceur de balles de defense riot gun. The controversial gun used by French police has caused severe injuries at previous protests.

La Nouvelle Republique newspaper reported that the 16-year-old is “still hospitalized” and was interviewed by the General Inspectorate of the National Police on Friday.

On Friday, video footage shared by Alertes Infos on US social media company X appeared to show a police officer attempting to drown a protester in Belfort.

“He can be seen holding the young man’s head underwater for long seconds,” Alertes Infos said.

However, Belfort Public Prosecutor Paul-Edouard Lallois later rejected the allegations, saying the officer was arresting a suspect who had allegedly attempted to start a fire before moving to a separate location to avoid being targeted.

Lallois said the officer and the young man lost their balance and fell into the river while the officer was attempting to handcuff the man for resisting arrest.

The officer then pulled the young man out of the water before handcuffing him, Lallois added.

In response to the video, Antoine Leaument, a lawmaker from the left-wing party La France Insoumise, tagged the interior minister in a post on X, urging him to call for calm “among the men under your responsibility.”

“This intervention does not comply with any of the rules of maintaining order. None,” Leaument wrote. (Anadolu Agency)

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