Burned town halls and record arrests

Crisis talks began on Sunday after a day of unrest that the interior ministry said brought more than 2,000 arrests across the country and left about 600 police officers, firefighters and paramedics hurt. In Paris alone, police said a record 855 people were arrested. Traders' unions reported that over 1,500 shops and businesses were ransacked, with damage costs running into tens of millions of euros.

The destruction reached public buildings in several cities:

• •In Limoges, the 19th-century town hall was burned down.
• •In Marseille, masked groups stormed the city hall and a police station.
• •In Lyon, the historic tourist office was torched.
• •Other town halls, including in Lille, were also targeted.

In Saint-Étienne, a 17-year-old boy had his right hand blown off by a crowd-control grenade. Masked looters used the chaos to smash shopfronts and steal goods; in Paris, some seen running through the night with clothes and shoeboxes appeared to be children.

Mayors describe unprecedented violence

Lamia El Aaraje, the Socialist deputy mayor of Paris, said the capital had experienced "a level of violence that we have never seen before, I believe". In Marseille, Socialist mayor Benoît Payan told BFMTV: "I have no words … I never thought I'd ever live through something like this." He said rioters attacked state buildings "with no real demands, but with the sole aim to wreck the demands of those who had demonstrated legitimately", and that questions must be asked about policing tactics.

In Limoges, mayor Guillaume Guérin said those who stormed his building "were not demonstrators that defend causes" but people organised for war, who told a caretaker he would be killed and warned elected officials they would "burn". He said that around 3:30pm the municipal police, though present in number, could no longer fight the rioters because they had run out of munition, calling it "a colossal failure of the state".

Lyon's Green mayor Grégory Doucet said he had never seen such violence in his city. He told Le Monde: "I'm stunned by the violence against public and state property. I saw and heard fear and anger. Shop-owners felt abandoned." He added that the government must find a "sense of nuance" in examining events, respond politically to peaceful demonstrators' demands and also examine the roots of the violence. A Paris shoe-shop owner said the looting was the work of organised groups, unrelated to peaceful protesters.

Peaceful marches set against the chaos

The violence unfolded alongside calm demonstrations in major cities including Paris, where tens of thousands marched in support of schoolchildren's demands for more teachers and repairs to decrepit schools. Those marches came after four weeks of street marches and barricades of schools, and drew parents, teachers, grandparents, students and workers protesting the high cost of living.

Separately, other groups caught police off guard with moving gatherings, sporadic burning, street barricades and clashes with police in cities including Paris, Bordeaux, Nice and Marseille.

Political fallout

Politicians on the left and right called for the resignation of the interior minister, Laurent Nuñez, after the government was caught by surprise by the scale of the violence. Opposition politicians criticised the policing tactics, citing a lack of state intelligence.

• •Macron's centrist government and far-right presidential frontrunner Marine Le Pen both blamed what they called "ultra-left" groups for the violence.
• •Prime minister Sébastien Lecornu said the government would not be "intimidated" by violence and blamed the unrest on the "ultra-left" and criminals.
• •Radical-left presidential candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who joined the Paris demonstration, said organisational failings by the government had "opened the door to chaos".
• •On social media, Lecornu answered him, saying it was "a dangerous and cynical reversal of responsibilities" to place the blame for the violence on police chiefs.

President Macron, who is standing down next spring, was preparing to address the nation on Sunday night, after writing on social media that there was "no place for violence" in France.