France orders localised curfews after weekend riots; Macron rejects Interior Minister's resignation

French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu has instructed prefects — the State's regional representatives — to impose "very limited" and "localised" curfews to prevent further rioting and looting, after a weekend of violence that targeted city halls, other public buildings and thousands of businesses across the country.

The instruction followed an emergency meeting with senior government officials. Mr. Lecornu said the areas to be placed under curfew would be specified on Monday. In Marseille, the prefect has already banned protests and other gatherings between noon and 8 p.m. on Monday.

Speaking after the meeting, Mr. Lecornu said that on Saturday, despite "scenes of severe violence and extensive property damage", no one was killed — something he described as "a miracle". He defended the work of police officers who faced groups of violent protesters.

The violence followed nationwide protests on Saturday against rising living costs and poor conditions in schools. At least 2,400 people were arrested across the country over the weekend. Authorities estimated on Monday that at least 3,000 businesses were damaged or looted in several cities.

On Sunday evening, groups set fire to rubbish bins, bicycles and other objects in the streets and looted shops in Paris, Lyon, Marseille and other cities. On Monday, cleanup crews and firefighters cleared shattered glass and other debris from the streets of the capital.

The unrest has also triggered a crisis within the government's law-and-order leadership. Interior Minister Laurent Nunez offered his resignation on Sunday, but President Emmanuel Macron refused it "given the need for continued command of law enforcement in the current context", according to a statement from the President's office on Monday.

The statement said Mr. Macron had instructed Mr. Nunez "to take all necessary steps to ensure full transparency about the failures in planning and intelligence-gathering that led to the violence". The President also asked for "new policing tactics on the ground as quickly as possible" to end the violence.

In a radio interview, Mr. Nunez said he had offered to step down because he bore responsibility for what had happened. "Now, the real issue is ensuring that this doesn't happen again," he told France Inter. "We obviously need to be better at anticipating the kind of mobilisation that is unfolding."

The Minister blamed the violence on what he called "hordes of troublemakers and looters" and "far-left activists", and said police strategy needed to adapt "in the face of extremely mobile groups". Authorities said groups of hundreds of people sought confrontations with police and targeted public buildings, including city halls and other public offices. Mr. Nunez acknowledged that the authorities had lost control in some major cities on Saturday. "You can't look shopkeepers in the eye when hundreds of businesses have been looted and say we haven't lost control in some of these major cities," he said.

In Limoges, in central France, flames engulfed the 19th-century City Hall, causing its roof to collapse and nearly destroying the building.

Ouri Zagoury, who owns a video game shop near Place de la République in Paris, said he closed the store on Saturday afternoon and later saw looters forcing their way in on his surveillance cameras. "There were so many people coming in and out. And even though I called the police, they said not to intervene, that they would come, but they never did, which is another problem," he said.

Jordan Bardella, president of the far-right National Rally, blamed the government for failing to prevent the violence, telling reporters at his party's headquarters that the government and the head of state had failed in what he called their essential duty of protecting the French people.

The scale of the damage and the acknowledged intelligence failures have put the government under pressure to explain how the unrest spread so widely, and to set out how it intends to prevent a repeat as it finalises the curfew orders.