Paris police have declared a state of maximum alert and closed 24 metro stations at their own request for security reasons ahead of an expected protest, citing the possibility of violence. The decision comes after last week’s violent incidents and the arrest of more than 2,500 people.<\/p>\n
Helen Dencher, a spokeswoman for the Paris police department, said the threat of violence and unrest remains serious, and that authorities had underestimated the scale of protester mobilisation and the intensity of clashes during the Oct. 17 demonstrations. Security checks have also led to flammable materials and other dangerous items being confiscated from protesters.<\/p>\n
There is also a major dispute between the police department and trade unions over the route of Saturday’s march. Police have banned the planned route between Bastille Square and Nation Square and \u043f\u0440\u0435\u0434\u043b\u043e\u0436ed an alternative route from Porte d’Italie to Porte de Vincennes, but the unions have rejected it.<\/p>\n
Similar protests have been authorised in eight major French cities, including Lille, Strasbourg and Marseille. In Marseille, security forces have been deployed in large numbers around the Old Port to prevent violence.<\/p>\n
The protests, which stem from the Yellow Vest movement, are against rising living costs and fuel prices and are a continuation of the widespread demonstrations held on Oct. 17 in France. Attendance last week was estimated at as many as 800,000 people, leading to riots, clashes and looting in some areas.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Paris police close 24 metro stations and tighten security ahead of protests over violence fears and cost-of-living anger.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":24609,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24610","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24610","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24610"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24610\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24609"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}