France protests draw 410,000 as Yellow Vests join students in second weekend of unrest

France's Interior Ministry counted 410,000 protesters across the country on Saturday as the Yellow Vest movement joined aggrieved school students for a second consecutive weekend of demonstrations.

Paris police put the capital's turnout at 110,000. The CGT trade union disputed both figures, claiming 800,000 participants nationwide, with 250,000 in Paris alone.

Police deployed 70,000 officers across France — an increase of 10,000 on last Saturday — after Interior Minister Laurent Nunez acknowledged publicly on Monday that authorities had suffered "a loss of control" the previous weekend. That earlier round of protests had seen gangs ransack at least 3,000 shops across the country.

Clashes between police and protesters broke out in the late afternoon in Paris, Lyon and Marseille. Officers used tear gas in Lyon to disperse masked protesters and again in Marseille to push back crowds. Despite widespread fears, the mass looting seen last Saturday did not repeat.

Yassaman Metghalchi, co-owner of a Paris jewellery shop that was looted last week, said that "last weekend, our neighborhood resembled a war zone" with gangs roaming the area, but that today it was completely empty apart from police with their vans. "All of our neighbors feel reassured," she added, although she noted that the night is still young and they need to wait and see what will happen.

Anxiety about further violence ran high ahead of Saturday's marches. Jonathan Siad, owner of a tobacco shop in Paris, said that "some of us are planning to buy weapons to defend ourselves" in case the pillagers return, and expressed concern that one day there's going to be a tragedy.

Saturday's crowd was smaller than the approximately 550,000 who attended demonstrations across the country the previous weekend. Residents said they would try to avoid protest areas, hoping the situation would not escalate as it did last Saturday, when clashes spread far beyond the march routes.