Wire reporting: (AP, via KSAT)

French Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez said nearly 1,000 people were arrested Saturday as nationwide protests over living costs and the education system gave way to clashes in several cities after largely peaceful daytime marches¹.

Nuñez said the arrest figure was expected to rise and described daytime marches as having passed off well, while saying officers later faced a high level of violence he attributed to ultra-left groups¹. He said some shops had been looted but on a smaller scale than a week earlier, when he said about 3,000 businesses were damaged or looted¹.

The Interior Ministry said about 410,000 people took part in about 298 protests; union organizers from the General Confederation of Labor put the number at about 800,000¹. Authorities had said they would deploy up to 70,000 officers nationwide, with helicopters, armored vehicles and water cannons^1,2,4.

In Paris, the authorized march was moved from near the Bastille to Porte d'Italie on the city's southeastern edge^1,4. Police said 110,000 people took part; unions said 250,000¹. The Paris prosecutor's office said 64 people, including six minors, were arrested and 40 were placed in custody, mostly on suspected weapons offenses or participation in a group preparing violence or property damage¹. Police said more than 3,000 people were stopped and checked¹.

A union representative, Murielle Guilbert, said it was wrong that President Emmanuel Macron had barred protesters from demonstrating where they wished, but participants complied with the change of route¹. Trade unions have called demonstration bans a violation of constitutionally protected expression, according to Associated Press reporting carried by KSAT³. Macron has said restrictions are needed to protect city centers, businesses and public buildings³.

Nuñez said several thousand radical activists gathered at the rear of the Paris march, including about 500 people identified as rioters, and that clashes lasted about two hours¹. Associated Press reporting carried by WSVN said police used tear gas in Lyon, where a rally was banned, and in Clermont-Ferrand⁴. CBS News, citing police and Agence France-Presse, also described tear gas or clashes in Nantes, Marseille, Bordeaux, Strasbourg, Toulouse and Nice¹.

Nuñez said one person was seriously injured in Clermont-Ferrand and that a 20-year-old man in Toulouse reportedly had fingers blown off; he did not give further details¹. In Orleans, thousands marched against a National Rally party congress; police put the crowd at 11,000 and organizers at 26,000, and French media said that protest ended peacefully¹.

The Yellow Vests called for further protests on Oct. 31¹. The demonstrations have continued since September, when high school students in southeastern Paris protested conditions before the movement spread to living-cost demands¹. What remains unclear is a final nationwide arrest total and a full accounting of injuries.