A wave of violence surrounding France’s nationwide high-school protests took a dangerous turn Monday when a group of masked attackers set fires at a Paris vocational school, forcing students and staff to shelter inside as flames blocked the entrance.
The attack took place at Lycée Vauquelin in Paris’ 13th arrondissement, where school officials said a group of roughly a dozen hooded and masked young people arrived at the beginning of the school day and quickly moved against the building.
School principal Carole Zerbib described the attackers as “very determined” and said it became immediately clear that confronting them was not an option.
“They looked very determined, very fast, and we immediately realized that we were not going to be able to argue with them,” Zerbib said.
The group used bicycles and a sofa to barricade the entrance before placing trash containers and other flammable materials near the doorway and setting them ablaze.
Windows were also smashed with a pair of crutches as the attack unfolded.
“It was very quick, very violent. You can tell that this team was very organized and had planned their attack,” Zerbib said.
The violence left roughly 100 students seeking shelter elsewhere inside the school after the fire made the main entrance inaccessible. Police and firefighters eventually brought the blaze under control, but the school was evacuated and classes were suspended.
The attackers did not simply disappear when emergency crews arrived.
According to reports, fireworks resembling mortars were fired toward firefighters attempting to respond.
And after the first fire had been extinguished, the attackers reportedly returned and started two additional fires less than an hour later, prompting authorities to lock down the school.
The incident came amid a rapidly escalating wave of demonstrations, blockades and violence at schools across France. The protests began over complaints involving overcrowding, teacher shortages and deteriorating school facilities, but officials say the unrest has increasingly been accompanied by vandalism and attacks.
French Education Minister Édouard Geffray said Monday that 24 schools had been burned or ransacked and that 78 education workers had been injured since the demonstrations began. Reuters reported that roughly 400 to 500 high schools were expected to be completely or partially closed Monday.
Zerbib said Vauquelin had already been on alert because of the unrest. She said students and teachers had warned her over the weekend about messages circulating on social media calling for the school to be burned.
“We had been conducting a dialogue with the students for several days, during which we listened to their demands,” she said.
But the violence that followed was reportedly not carried out by students from the school itself. Zerbib said the people who attacked Vauquelin were outsiders.
That distinction matters as France prepares for another nationwide day of student demonstrations. Authorities are now dealing with a movement that began around legitimate complaints about education conditions but has increasingly included confrontations, property destruction and attacks on police and emergency personnel.
The scale of the unrest is substantial. French authorities said more than 5,000 people had been placed in police custody since the violence began, with the overwhelming majority being minors, while more than 1,800 people were facing prosecution as of Monday.
The Vauquelin attack therefore represents more than another damaged building. A school became the target, students and teachers were trapped inside, and firefighters responding to the blaze were themselves targeted.
Whatever the original grievances behind France’s student protests, setting schools on fire and obstructing emergency crews crosses a line that has little to do with classroom conditions. The French government now faces the difficult task of protecting students, teachers and public property while allowing peaceful demonstrations to proceed.
