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The French government has ordered an immediate halt to the use of stun grenades by police deployed against demonstrating high school students, the interior minister announced on Wednesday, following the severe injury of a 15-year-old whose hand was blown off up to the elbow by a projectile fired by officers. The decision marks a significant escalation in the political fallout from a student uprising that has been gathering momentum since mid-September, and it raises fresh questions about the crowd-control equipment routinely carried by French riot units.
The announcement, delivered just over 24 hours after hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets nationwide, came amid growing pressure on the authorities to account for a wave of allegations of police brutality. Eighteen internal investigations have already been opened in response to those claims since the student movement began, according to the interior ministry, signaling the scale of the disciplinary challenge now facing the security services.
The teenager's injury has become the defining image of the crackdown. Witnesses and images circulating from the demonstrations show a police officer throwing a dispersal grenade during a protest by high-school students in Paris on October 6, 2026 — the same day the nationwide rallies reached their peak. Medical officials have described the wound as life-changing, with the hand destroyed as far as the elbow. For many families watching the events unfold, that single injury crystallized fears about the risks faced by minors confronting lines of heavily equipped riot police.
Those fears must be weighed against the right to protest, a tension that legal scholars and civil liberties advocates have long highlighted in the French context. Crowd-dispersal munitions are designed to intimidate and scatter crowds rather than to maim, yet their deployment in confined spaces, near young people or in chaotic conditions can produce devastating consequences. The suspension announced on Wednesday effectively acknowledges that the margin for error has been exhausted.
The underlying grievance driving the unrest is money — specifically, what demonstrators describe as a chronic lack of national education funding. Students, teachers, union members and parents have rallied together under a shared complaint that schools and universities are being starved of resources, leaving classrooms overcrowded, buildings deteriorating and staff stretched thin. What began as scattered walkouts in mid-September has swelled into one of the most significant youth-led mobilizations France has seen in recent years.
Tuesday's demonstrations illustrated the breadth of that coalition. The interior ministry estimated that 250,000 people participated in the nationwide protests, while organisers put the figure at close to twice that, claiming almost 450,000 attendees. Such discrepancies between official tallies and protest estimates are common in France, but even the government's conservative count points to a movement with considerable reach and organization.
The scale of the disruption to the education system was equally striking. According to the education ministry, 891 of the roughly 3,700 high schools across France had lessons "suspended, either completely or partially, for various reasons" on Tuesday — more than a quarter of all secondary institutions in the country. Around 40 percent of public higher education institutions were also disrupted, the higher education ministry said, underscoring that the unrest extends well beyond teenagers in lycées.
Law enforcement, meanwhile, reported significant casualties of its own. Police arrested 488 people during Tuesday's demonstrations, and the interior ministry said 43 members of law enforcement had been injured. Those figures are likely to be cited by police unions defending their members' conduct, even as rights groups point to the far graver injuries reported among demonstrators, of which the 15-year-old's case is the most shocking example.
The 18 internal probes represent a parallel track of accountability that could prove decisive for public confidence. Investigations into alleged police brutality tend to move slowly, and critics argue that they often conclude without meaningful sanctions. Still, the sheer number opened in such a short window suggests that the interior ministry recognizes the political cost of appearing indifferent to the accusations piling up day after day.
For the government, the suspension of stun grenades is an attempt to draw a line under the most dangerous tactics while preserving the capacity to police future demonstrations. Officials will be hoping the gesture defuses public anger without conceding the broader argument over education spending — a demand that would require commitments far more expensive than any operational order to riot units.
Yet the students show no sign of retreating. The movement has been characterized from its earliest days as one that displays no intention of slowing down, and the promises of further action have kept schools on edge. The interior ministry's own account of 250,000 marchers, remarkable by any standard, indicates an organizational infrastructure capable of mobilizing repeatedly rather than staging a single symbolic day.
Observers note that moments like this often become turning points in French social movements. The injury to a minor, the suspension of a weapon used by police, and the rapid multiplication of internal investigations together create a rare alignment of public sympathy, official admission of fault and institutional scrutiny. Whether that alignment translates into sustained education funding remains the unresolved question at the heart of the crisis.
What is clear is that the standoff has moved beyond the classroom. With arrests mounting, officers injured, schools shuttered and now a teenager facing life-altering disability, the cost of the dispute is being measured in far more than budget lines. The interior minister's announcement on Wednesday may calm the streets temporarily, but the grievances that brought hundreds of thousands into them in the first place remain firmly unresolved.
France 24, with AFP, AP and Reuters.
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