Police appear to have been taken by surprise by scale of looting that began after protests turned violent in Paris and other cities

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Just before 1am on Monday morning, two motorbikes carrying one passenger each stopped at a traffic light on a backstreet near rue de Rivoli, one of central Paris’s busiest shopping streets.

“You’ve got to go where there are a lot of people, where they’ve done the shop windows,” said one motorbike rider to another. Minutes later 10 other men, their faces covered with ski balaclavas, came down the street on foot pursued by a police van.

Ministers, officials and police under pressure over response to protests as government holds crisis talks amid ‘colossal failure of the state’

The French president, Emmanuel Macron, has criticised “unbridled violence” after one of the most violent days of unrest in years left public buildings burned, hundreds of shops destroyed and looted and at least 2,400 people arrested in cities across the country.

“Watching these images, we have all asked ourselves how could French people do this to France?” he said in a televised address.

Ministers, officials and police under pressure over response to protests as government holds crisis talks amid ‘colossal failure of the state’

The French president, Emmanuel Macron, has criticised “unbridled violence” after one of the most violent days of unrest in years left public buildings burned, hundreds of shops destroyed and looted and at least 2,400 people arrested in cities across the country.

“Watching these images, we have all asked ourselves how could French people do this to France?” he said in a televised address.

Four children allegedly ‘mutilated’ by explosive weapons and lawyers say unprecedented number held in custody

French lawyers and rights groups have said that several teenagers have suffered war-like injuries from police weapons used during school protests, and an unprecedented number of children have been held in police custody, some of whom reported being hit or racially insulted.

France is in the fourth week of its biggest youth protest movement in decades, during which hundreds of high schools across the country have been blockaded as students demand the replacement of absent teachers and repairs to decrepit buildings.

Swedish activist Greta Thunberg joins teenagers calling for investment to fix teacher shortages and crumbling schools

More than 160,000 schoolchildren, students and trade unionists have marched in cities across France as protests over high school education continued into a third week and many demonstrators denounced policing tactics.

Riot police fired teargas at the end of Tuesday’s marches in Nantes and near the Montparnasse area of Paris, but most of the demonstrations over teacher shortages, overcrowded classes and crumbling school buildings held in cities including Lyon, Lille and Marseille were peaceful.