The United Arab Emirates has agreed to return to the war in Yemen alongside Saudi Arabia, Donald Trump has suspended new sanctions on Russia that he signed into law last month, the White House press secretary has left after five days, settlers have attacked European diplomats in the West Bank, a Mexican court has jailed the killers of three surfers, a tanker has burned in the Strait of Hormuz, London police have closed a case over a social media post, and France has seen hundreds of arrests at nationwide protests.
UAE agrees to rejoin Saudi Arabia in the fight against the Houthis in Yemen
The United Arab Emirates has agreed to re-enter the conflict in Yemen by resuming payments to some of the government forces fighting the Iran-aligned Houthi movement in the south of the country, according to people in Yemen familiar with the arrangement. Under the deal, Saudi Arabia will provide air cover for the anti-Houthi ground forces that the Emirates finances. The understanding is the first concrete sign that the deep rift between the two Gulf monarchies over the future of Yemen has begun to close, and it appears to have been driven largely by alarm in both capitals at the speed of the Houthi advance. Saudi Arabia now faces drone and missile attacks every day, and strikes by the movement have repeatedly shut its airports and damaged parts of its energy infrastructure, while the kingdom tries to keep daily life looking as normal as possible for its residents and visitors.
The forces that stand to benefit are mainly southern units, above all the Giant Brigades, which the Emirates once trained and paid and which are regarded as among the most capable in a fragmented coalition. Abu Dhabi ended its operations inside Yemen in January and stopped the money. Neither Gulf government has answered a demand made this week by southern separatists for a referendum on secession that would restore the borders that divided Yemen into two states between 1967 and 1990. The separatist Southern Transitional Council has not yet agreed to let its troops fight beyond the lines of the former southern state, although a Saudi promise of a vote would probably lift that limit. The government recognised by the United Nations, based in Aden, announced a counteroffensive last week aimed at the capital, Sanaa, but it has made only modest progress near Marib and the Bab al-Mandab strait.
The pressure on Aden itself has grown. On Friday two Houthi missiles landed on the grounds of the city’s airport while a Yemenia passenger flight to Cairo was preparing to take off; nobody was hurt, and Information Minister Moammar al-Eryani said the projectiles fell about 500 metres from the aircraft. A day earlier, a Houthi strike on the Maashiq presidential palace killed at least five people and wounded 16, among them guards and civilian staff, according to the health minister. The government said Prime Minister Shaya al-Zindani was unharmed, although two of his bodyguards died. A Houthi military spokesman, Yahya Saree, said the group had targeted what it called the Saudi military command in Aden. Egypt’s president, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, has asked parliament for authority to help defend Saudi Arabia, stressing that Egypt would take no offensive action, while the United Kingdom has sent an air-to-air refuelling aircraft and is weighing a Saudi request for more help.
The war had been largely frozen since a truce in 2022, years after the Houthis seized Sanaa in 2014 and the recognised government moved south to Aden with the support of a Saudi-led coalition. It reignited during the summer, when Saudi Arabia bombed the runway at Sanaa airport to stop an Iranian aircraft carrying Yemenis home from the funeral of Iran’s supreme leader. The Houthis answered with a declared naval blockade of the kingdom and missile fire at its oil sites. In mid-September the movement pushed down the Red Sea coast, and by 16 September it had taken the town of Mocha, an airport and small islands in the Bab al-Mandab, one of the world’s most important waterways. In early October the president of the Presidential Leadership Council, Rashad al-Alimi, launched a counteroffensive with about 100 Saudi jets flying in support of ground troops.
The Emirates joined the Saudi-led coalition in 2015 but gradually distanced itself, building ties with the southern separatists and training their fighters. Relations broke down in January, when the Southern Transitional Council tried to take control across the south and announce a vote on independence; Saudi Arabia then bombed Emirati arms shipments meant for the council, Abu Dhabi announced its withdrawal, and the council’s leader, Aidarous al-Zubaidi, fled to the Emirates and was charged with treason by the government. Saudi officials have blamed Iran for encouraging the escalation, a claim Tehran’s foreign ministry rejected on Friday. The United Nations Security Council has condemned Houthi attacks on Saudi Arabia and on 15 October issued a statement affirming the kingdom’s right to self-defence. The United Nations says more than 200,000 people have been displaced since August, and its special envoy, Hans Grundberg, warned on 9 October that Yemen had returned to full-scale war.
Trump suspends new Russia sanctions and draws criticism from both parties
Donald Trump has suspended a wide range of sanctions on Russia two days before they were due to come into force, using an executive order signed on Friday night that describes the waiver as being in the national interest of the United States. The measures had been passed by Congress with large majorities and signed into law by the president in September. The order does not say when, or whether, the restrictions will take effect, stating only that they remain on hold until the president or senior officials decide that further action is appropriate. Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, said it was unfortunate that Washington had chosen to disregard the law completely, arguing that the sanctions could have helped enormously and had been designed to put real pressure on Moscow to end the war. He later told reporters that he expected the administration to lift further sanctions on Russia.
Criticism came from both parties in Washington. Thom Tillis, a Republican senator from North Carolina, described the decision as beyond irresponsible and asked what part of enforcing a law passed by 86 votes to 11 the president and his advisers did not understand. Senator John Cornyn of Texas warned that helping Vladimir Putin in Ukraine was reckless and that NATO allies would be next, while fellow Texan Ted Cruz, a close ally of the president, said he wished the step had not been taken. Representative Don Bacon of Nebraska said many lawmakers would resist funding the president’s agenda as a result. Among Democrats, Representative Don Beyer of Virginia accused the president of surrendering to Moscow, and Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts urged colleagues to reverse the decision. A Russian envoy, Kirill Dmitriev, welcomed the move as a historic moment and said the sanctions would have damaged the United States and global markets.
The waiver widens an already tense dispute between Washington and Kyiv. Last week the administration agreed to import Russian diesel in an effort to bring down fuel prices, which have climbed sharply during the war with Iran, and Ukrainian officials have accused the United States of pulling back important military support. Mr Trump has said Mr Zelensky is harder to deal with than Mr Putin, and the Ukrainian leader responded at a European Union summit that it was good to be among real leaders. Mr Zelensky also pointed to overnight Russian strikes on 15 Ukrainian energy facilities that caused power cuts in several regions, saying Moscow wanted to plunge the country into darkness before winter. Ukrainian officials reported at least nine people killed and about 60 injured over 24 hours. Mr Zelensky added that negotiators from both countries had spoken on Friday and could meet next week.
The legislation, formally named the Lindsey O Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026, was signed by the president on 18 September after passing the House of Representatives earlier that week. It carries the name of the Republican senator from South Carolina, a prominent supporter of Ukraine in Congress, who died on 11 July from an aortic dissection shortly after returning from a visit to Kyiv. The 48-page law gave the president broad powers to impose tariffs of up to 100 per cent on goods from the five largest buyers of Russian oil and gas, most notably China and India, and it also covered the energy and weapons sectors of Iran. It provided exemptions for countries importing less than 15 per cent of their natural gas from Russia that were working to reduce their dependence.
The act also targeted Mr Putin personally, together with senior members of the Russian government, banks and other financial institutions, and the so-called shadow fleet of tankers that Moscow uses to get around existing restrictions on its oil. Research by an independent energy institute found that China took about half of Russian crude exports between December 2022 and August 2026, with India accounting for 37 per cent and Turkey and the European Union about 5 per cent each. Mr Zelensky had thanked Mr Trump for signing what he called critically important legislation and urged that it be applied fully and quickly. Congress is now in recess until after the midterm elections on 3 November, which limits any immediate attempt to challenge the waiver, although the senior Democrat on the House foreign affairs committee, Gregory Meeks, has introduced a bill to block the separate diesel agreement with Russia.
White House press secretary Katie Zacharia leaves after five days in the post
Katie Zacharia is leaving her job as White House press secretary five days after a difficult first public appearance, making her tenure the shortest of any recent holder of the post. The White House confirmed that she would be moving out of the role after Donald Trump, speaking to journalists on Friday before the announcement, recounted a conversation in which he had told her that she did not have to stay if she did not want to and that, in her position, he would reconsider. The president said he believed she had been treated harshly by the media. Hours later, Ms Zacharia praised Mr Trump on social media as kind, gracious and the hardest-working man she knew, and said that serving him had been an honour. The president later said he was in no hurry to choose a successor and suggested that the job might simply not have suited her.
Her first briefing, on Tuesday, was over in under 15 minutes, and she took just three questions from the press. During it she read from prepared notes, at one point referred to her husband as the president, and was asked where she had passed the bar examination, since the president and others had described her as an attorney. She replied that it had been in China. On Thursday she acknowledged that she had never passed a bar examination, although a written statement from her maintained that her work on cross-border transactions in China had been done with the proper credentials. In a televised interview the same day, a conservative presenter pressed her on why she had not simply said that she had never practised law, and on Friday she told a morning programme that she had not disclosed the point because the question had never been put to her.
Democrats quickly presented her departure as a sign of disarray less than three weeks before the midterm elections that will decide control of Congress. The leader of the Democrats in the House of Representatives, Hakeem Jeffries, wrote that the press secretary was gone and that the president’s movement was falling apart. Polls suggest the vote could be difficult for the Republican Party, and some of its candidates have been distancing themselves from the president and his policies. The White House has also faced a series of controversies in recent weeks, including corruption allegations that forced the resignation of the ambassador to Greece, Kimberly Guilfoyle, and the reversal of a plan to broadcast a military execution in December after objections from both parties. Anthony Scaramucci, who lasted ten days as communications director in Mr Trump’s first term and had held the record for the shortest stay in the president’s press team, wrote that records are made to be broken.
Ms Zacharia was named on 9 October as the sixth chief spokesperson across Mr Trump’s two administrations, after the departure in August of Karoline Leavitt, who had held the post since the start of the second term. Announcing the choice, the president called her loyal and a devoted supporter of his movement, and said she had helped his campaigns in key swing states. Ms Zacharia, 42, had been a senior communications adviser at the president’s media company and its social platform since June, and before that worked as a spokeswoman at the Department of Homeland Security from February to March this year. She said at the time that she had left that department because travelling between California and Washington was hard on her family. She is a mother of four and a frequent guest on conservative television channels.
Her career in Republican politics began in 2006 with internships at the national committee of the party and at the political affairs office of the White House, during the presidency of George W Bush. A graduate of the law school at Pepperdine University in California, she later served as general counsel for a conservative non-profit organisation and spent nearly two years from 2011 working as a clerk at a law firm in Beijing. Political scientists said at the time of her appointment that the choice reflected the importance Mr Trump places on personal loyalty, and that it blurred the lines between traditional and partisan media. Before taking the post, Ms Zacharia had herself written that the president did not need a spokesperson because he was his own best press secretary, a role he has often played by announcing policy from the Oval Office, the White House lawn and airport tarmacs.
Settlers attack European diplomats during the olive harvest in the West Bank
Masked Israeli settlers attacked a group of European diplomats, a French mayor and a Catholic archbishop on Saturday in Taybeh, a Christian town in the occupied West Bank, during a visit to support Palestinians harvesting olives on their own land. Three people were injured and a car was damaged. Bernard Baudoux, the mayor of the northern French town of Aulnoye-Aymeries, who was in Taybeh to launch a twinning agreement, was wearing his official sash and trying to get into a vehicle with diplomatic plates when he was struck and knocked to the ground, according to a witness. The archbishop of Cambrai, Vincent Dollmann, and the mayor’s wife were also threatened by the group of seven men, some carrying clubs. The visitors included the French consul general in Jerusalem and his wife, as well as the Belgian and Polish consuls, and the attackers smashed a window of an armoured car belonging to the Belgian mission.
Before reaching the diplomats, the settlers attacked Palestinians working on the lower slopes of the hills near the town, stealing olives, kicking and insulting a woman in her seventies and beating a man so severely that his head wound needed six stitches. Belgium’s deputy prime minister and foreign minister, Maxime Prévot, condemned the violence in the strongest terms, said his team was safe and pledged to keep pressing for European Union sanctions on violent settlers. He linked the attack to what he called Israel’s illegal settlement policy and said that, as the occupying power, Israel must protect Palestinians and that impunity must end. The parish priest of Taybeh, Bashar Fawadleh, said settlers had never before targeted foreign diplomats in the town and described the attack as a deeply disturbing escalation, asking what protection would remain for local families once international witnesses had gone.
Israeli officials condemned the attack. The foreign minister, Gideon Saar, called it a severe act of violence by rioters and said his ministry was in contact with the ambassadors of the countries concerned, while the police said they had opened an investigation and would pursue everyone involved. The military described the incident as serious but said the visit had not been coordinated with it and that no soldiers were present, and the foreign minister said diplomats risked attack if they travelled without such coordination. A western diplomatic source argued that requiring advance notice breached diplomatic conventions and that Israel was responsible for security across most of the territory. Gadi Eisenkot, a former army chief standing against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in elections later this month, called the attack Jewish terror carried out under the protection of the government.
The attack came a day after settlers struck olive pickers in at least eight villages, according to Palestinian authorities, who said at least 20 people were injured. In Abu Falah, near Ramallah, at least 80 settlers, some armed, gathered to stop farmers reaching their trees and used slingshots to throw stones while Israeli military vehicles looked on; when some Palestinians picked up stones in response, soldiers fired tear gas towards them. An American photographer working for a US newspaper, Heidi Levine, was beaten for more than ten minutes, and her passport, phone and equipment were taken. She said her protective helmet and vest had probably saved her life. She had surgery on Saturday and was described by the hospital treating her as being in a moderate condition. The Foreign Press Association in Israel said repeated calls for action against such violence had been ignored.
The annual olive harvest, which began in late September, is economically and culturally vital for Palestinian communities, and it has become a recurring focus of settler violence. An Israeli human rights group, Yesh Din, has counted more than 170 attacks since 27 September, and Palestinian authorities say at least four people have been killed, more than 100 injured and thousands of trees damaged in that period. This year Israel also restricted the harvest by barring Palestinians from trees in Area C, the part of the West Bank under full Israeli military control that contains most of its farmland. The violence has drawn accusations of ethnic cleansing, including from the British government, and the former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert has called on the International Criminal Court to intervene. Belgium is among the European states pushing for wider sanctions on settlers.
Mexican judge sentences three men to more than 158 years for murders of three surfers
Three men have each been given prison terms of 158 years and nine months by a judge in Mexico for killing Jake and Callum Robinson, two brothers from Australia, and their friend Carter Rhoad, a US citizen, during a surfing trip to the state of Baja California in 2024. The three had been found guilty a week earlier of homicide, aggravated robbery, violent robbery and violent vehicle theft. For legal reasons their surnames were withheld, so they were identified in court only as Jesús Gerardo, said to be known by the nickname El Kekas and accused of leading the attack, Irineo Francisco and Ángel Jesús. Prosecutors had asked for damages of more than 100,000 dollars, but the judge declined to order them and ruled that the families would need to bring a civil claim if they wanted compensation. The victims’ families followed the sentencing hearing remotely by video link.
The three friends, all in their early thirties, were camping at an isolated stretch of coast close to Ensenada when they were set upon on 27 April 2024, barely a day and a half after crossing into Mexico from the United States. The court heard that they were shot in the head in what appeared to be a botched attempt to steal their truck, and their bodies were dumped in a well on a clifftop. Their bodies were recovered several days later and identified by their families. Speaking in court, the brothers’ mother, Debra Robinson, said the killings had taken away the future the family had imagined with her sons. In November last year, the girlfriend of the alleged ringleader was sentenced in a separate trial to 20 years in prison after admitting involvement in the robbery.
The case caused shock far beyond Mexico, particularly in Australia, because the coastline around Ensenada has long been regarded as safe and welcoming for surfers. The authorities could offer no explanation for the killings beyond saying that the men had been in the wrong place at the wrong time, and local surfers called for better protection for residents and tourists, citing other recent violent incidents in the state. The regional economy depends heavily on visitors. The brothers’ parents, Martin and Debra Robinson, travelled from Australia to Ensenada for the trial, which opened on 7 September, and have since set up a foundation in their sons’ names. They have said its purpose is to encourage people to live fully and generously in memory of the two men.
When the guilty verdict was delivered on 10 October, Martin Robinson expressed gratitude to the judge and court staff, to the Australian Federal Police and to Australia’s embassy in Mexico, and said that while no outcome could undo the tragedy, the family hoped it marked an important step towards justice. Debra Robinson said at the time that a verdict was a good thing but could not bring her sons back, and that she held no feelings towards the men found guilty. Callum Robinson, the elder brother, had moved to the United States to play lacrosse professionally and was remembered for his passion for the environment and his involvement in coastal clean-ups. Jake Robinson was a doctor who had been due to start work at a hospital in Geelong after returning home, and was remembered for his academic success, his love of sport and his compassion.
Baja California is one of the most violent states in Mexico, with a heavy presence of organised crime and drug trafficking, although cartel violence does not usually touch foreign visitors. There have nevertheless been other attacks on tourists along the Pacific coast. In 2015 two Australian surfers, Dean Lucas and Adam Coleman, were killed while travelling through the north-western state of Sinaloa, and their bodies were later burned. The sentences were handed down two and a half years after the killings, following a trial that opened in September and ended with all three men convicted on each of the four charges brought by prosecutors. The judge left any claim for compensation to the civil courts, so the criminal case ends with the prison terms alone.
Tanker carrying two million barrels of oil catches fire in the Strait of Hormuz
A large tanker was set ablaze when it hit a sea mine in the Strait of Hormuz, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said on Saturday. In a statement carried by Iranian state media, the force’s navy said the vessel, which was carrying more than two million barrels of oil, hit the mine while trying to pass through what it called an unauthorised route, causing a massive explosion and a fierce fire. The exact location of the incident was not clear. An Iranian news agency released video that appeared to show the ship in flames. The Guard’s navy also accused the tanker of having switched off its positioning and radar systems to avoid detection, and said that the strait was closed and that ships defying Iranian rules there would burn for trusting the American military. The statement did not name the vessel or say what had happened to its crew, and there was no immediate independent account of the incident.
The United States disputes Iran’s claim to control the waterway. On Friday the commander of US Central Command, Admiral Brad Cooper, said American forces were working with regional allies and the shipping industry to protect vessels using the strait. He said it was controlled by the United States and its regional partners, not Iran, and that it remained open for business. US officials have repeatedly said that commercial traffic continues to move through the area despite what they describe as unwarranted aggression by the Revolutionary Guard. Iranian officials, for their part, insist that vessels must follow a route closer to the Iranian coast, and they describe the passage used by escorted tankers near the coast of Oman as unauthorised. Iran describes the vessels that use that route as defying its regulations, and the dispute over who controls the passage has become one of the central issues of the war.
Attacks on shipping in and around the strait have reached record levels this month. Data published by the United Kingdom’s Maritime Trade Operations agency show that 12 vessels reported attacks between 5 and 11 October, the highest weekly figure since the war involving the United States, Israel and Iran began, after ten the previous week. Six ships were struck on a single day, 11 October. One of them, a tanker sailing under the flag of Nicaragua, was hit by a drone near an anchorage off Oman, more than 250 kilometres from the strait, and two of its crew were still missing days later. A container ship sank after being hit by an unidentified projectile in the strait on 13 October, although all 21 people on board were evacuated safely. Analysts say Iran has widened its attacks to ships near Gulf Arab coasts and in the Gulf of Oman.
The Strait of Hormuz normally carries about a quarter of the world’s seaborne oil trade, and it has been at the centre of the confrontation between Washington and Tehran since the war broke out in late February. Iran effectively closed the passage after American and Israeli strikes on its territory, and the United States responded by imposing a naval blockade on Iranian ports and shipping, which has halted Iran’s own oil exports entirely. In September oil flows began to recover as the US Navy escorted more tankers through the southern part of the strait, and Gulf producers used a shuttle system in which smaller tankers carry crude through the waterway before transferring it to larger ships in the Gulf of Oman. Navy figures show assisted transits in early October were up 85 per cent on the same period in August.
The surge in attacks has slowed that recovery. Trade intelligence data show that about 12.6 million barrels a day passed through the strait on 13 October, down from 15 million at the end of September and well below the pre-war level of around 17 million barrels a day. Risk analysts say Iran has adapted its strategy to the weakening of its grip on the waterway, mounting attacks almost every day in an attempt to stop ships from passing and to deter others from trying. The Revolutionary Guard’s navy has warned that its operations would not be limited to the strait and has announced a new deployment across the region. The war has also pushed up energy prices in the United States, where the cost of living has become a central issue ahead of next month’s midterm elections and where the administration has sought other ways to bring fuel prices down.
London police take no action over post by wife of UK security adviser
London’s Metropolitan Police have said they will take no further action against the writer Sarah Helm, the wife of the British government’s national security adviser, Jonathan Powell, over a social media post that was said to express support for the banned group Palestine Action. On Thursday Ms Helm wrote on the platform X a line asking for God’s help for authors who support Palestine and Palestine Action. The force said on Friday that the post was being assessed to decide whether an investigation was needed. In an update on Saturday, a police spokesperson said specialist officers had examined the message and concluded that it did not meet the threshold for a criminal offence, so no further police action would be taken. Officers are understood to have decided there was not enough evidence that the message could encourage people to back a banned organisation.
Ms Helm was responding to a discussion about the Irish novelist Sally Rooney, who says her books can no longer be sold in the United Kingdom because of her support for Palestine Action. A broadcaster had described Ms Rooney’s position on Palestine as anti-Jewish, and Ms Helm’s post suggested that he would want the books of all such authors removed from the shelves. Downing Street distanced itself from the comment, with a government spokesperson saying the views were held by an individual who did not represent the government in any capacity. The Campaign Against Antisemitism had called on police to investigate, and while accepting that spouses are entitled to their own opinions, the group said the post raised extremely serious questions for Mr Powell and for the government, and that Ms Helm should face the full force of the law.
Others took the opposite view. Defend Our Juries, a campaign group that supports the right to peaceful protest, thanked Ms Helm for defying what it called an authoritarian ban and questioned how the government led by Andy Burnham could defend the measure before the Supreme Court next month when the wife of its own national security adviser had challenged it. The group said it knew of 36 people who had been arrested and had their homes searched for similar expressions of support on social media, and argued that the ban could not be enforced against everyone who opposed it. Government vetting guidance states that being married to a suspected or convicted terrorist would normally lead to the withdrawal of security clearance, which placed Mr Powell under pressure to distance himself from his wife’s remarks before the police decision was announced.
The ban on Palestine Action took effect in July 2025 under the United Kingdom’s terrorism laws. It made membership of the direct action group, or support for it, a criminal offence punishable by up to 14 years in prison. Since then, more than 3,700 people have been arrested for backing the group, and more than 2,250 have been formally charged under terrorism legislation. Campaigners who oppose the ban describe it as an unprecedented attack on free speech and say it cannot be applied consistently to everyone who challenges it, while groups such as the Campaign Against Antisemitism have insisted that anyone who appears to support a proscribed organisation should be prosecuted. The legality of the ban is due to be examined by the Supreme Court next month, and Ms Rooney’s decision to pledge the proceeds of her book sales to the group has kept the dispute in the public eye.
Ms Helm is an award-winning author and a former journalist who spent many years covering the Middle East, including as diplomatic editor at a national newspaper. Her books include a history of the women held by the Nazis in the Ravensbrück camp, and she wrote Loyalty, a play about the Iraq war inspired by her husband’s decade as chief of staff to the former prime minister Tony Blair. She is now writing a book about Gaza. She married Mr Powell in 2007. He was appointed national security adviser in 2024, and the Campaign Against Antisemitism noted that he had been closely involved in British diplomacy in the Middle East when it demanded that he publicly reject his wife’s words. The government’s only public response has been to repeat that the views expressed by Ms Helm are her own and that she does not speak for it.
More than 400 arrested as protests over schools and living costs spread across France
More than 400 people were arrested in France on Saturday as hundreds of thousands of people joined demonstrations across the country and clashes broke out with police on the fringes of several marches. The protests began as a movement of high school students angry about absent teachers, crumbling school buildings and police violence, and on Saturday they were joined by other groups protesting against high prices and the weakening of the welfare system. Late in the day the interior minister, Laurent Nuñez, said most of those detained were adults with no link to the student protests, and he accused opportunistic looters of hijacking the official demonstrations. He said the government did not plan to declare a state of emergency but strongly condemned the violence, promising that those responsible would be found and dealt with firmly.
In Paris, a peaceful march near the Place de la République turned violent when masked groups dressed in black hurled fireworks and cobblestones, smashed their way into a bank and stripped a sports shop, and police responded with tear gas. Rubbish bins were set alight, a lorry was set on fire and the flames spread to a nearby building, while dozens of shops were broken into along Boulevard Magenta in a largely working-class district. In Marseille, protesters used street barriers to force open the door of the town hall and briefly got inside before police removed them. The authorities said that by midday 140 protests involving 32,800 people had been recorded outside the capital, and they blamed the violence on the far left. Many metro stations in Paris were closed at police request, and some gatherings in the city centre were banned.
The day of action followed calls on social media to revive the yellow vest movement, which emerged in 2018 against social injustice, and organisers urged teachers, students, workers, pensioners and farmers to take part. The CGT, one of the largest trade unions in France, backed the protests and called for higher wages and pensions, lower prices and properly funded public services. A survey of 2,000 people carried out in October found that about 45 per cent of the population was worried about the cost of living and inflation. Political parties at both ends of the spectrum have tried to draw advantage from the unrest, with the left siding with the protesters and the right backing the police. The leader of the left-wing France Unbowed party, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, marched with students earlier in the week.
On Friday President Emmanuel Macron appealed for calm. He said there was a constitutional right to protest that he had always been careful to uphold, but that it came with a duty of respect for people and property, and he described the presence of people who came only to cause damage as unacceptable. Mr Macron is in the final stretch of his presidency, and the protests are influencing the campaign for the election to succeed him. The student movement began last month in schools in the poorer northern suburbs of Paris, where anger over teacher absences and run-down facilities quickly grew into a national campaign against inequality and falling standards. In recent weeks there have been thousands of arrests and hundreds of injuries, schools have been set on fire, and a police watchdog is examining allegations of misconduct by officers.
At the start of October, hundreds of high schools were closed or blockaded as pupils protested against what they described as a neglected and underfunded system. Students complained of classes of up to 40 pupils, buildings with leaking roofs and partly collapsed ceilings, poor pay for teachers, long school days, a difficult online system for university applications and classrooms that became unbearably hot during heatwaves in May and June. Some contrasted cuts to the education budget with rising spending on the armed forces. The government said at the time that the grievances were legitimate but condemned what it called urban violence. The education ministry reported that 65 staff, including 40 head teachers, had been injured in the early protests, and an investigation was opened after a 14-year-old boy suffered serious injuries to his face during a police intervention.