Student, 15, has hand blown off whereas attempting to throw stun grenade again at police as far-left rioters torch college with academics and pupils inside

A teenager in France has had his hand blown off after trying to throw a stun grenade back at police during student riots that have shocked the nation. 

Protests over dilapidated schools and classrooms, overcrowding and teacher shortages that began last week quickly turned violent. 

Fresh violence took place today near the Auguste Behal high school in Lens, northern France. 

A 15-year-old boy picked up a police stun grenade, intending to throw it back, only for the device to explode and rip his hand off. 

Footage from the scene showed several people tending to the young man as he lay on the pavement. His left hand appeared to be missing, with a bloody stump in its place. 

Several people were heard screaming in the video. He was later seen slowly walking away from the scene. 

Other reports said he may have lost his arm up to his elbow, but this has not been confirmed. 

It comes after far-Left rioters set fire to the entrance of a Paris school, leaving teachers and pupils trapped inside, during the mass student protests. 

Footage taken outside the Vauquelin high school in Paris this morning showed violent thugs setting fire to the school’s entrance. 

Through smashed glass, flames were seen licking the front doors of the school. The flames appeared to be coming from a blockade. 

After several seconds, two men with fire extinguishers were seen trying in vain to douse the flames from inside the building. 

However, the blaze grew in size and ferocity. Behind it, young thugs were seen throwing things into the blockade, fuelling the flames. 

Local media reported that around 100 students needed to be evacuated from the school, adding that demonstrators were shooting fireworks at firefighters during the operation.  

Carole Zerbib, head of the vandalised school, said it had been attacked by a ‘very determined’ group wearing hoods and masks who tried to break through its main entrance and then lit a fire.

Police and firefighters quickly put out the fire and the school was evacuated and classes were suspended.

‘It was very violent and happened very quickly,’ she said, adding that the attack lasted between 15 and 20 minutes.

‘It was terrible for students who witnessed this outburst of violence,’ she said, adding that those behind the attack on her school did not study there.

The school is one of hundreds affected by violence that has plagued France since last week. 

Many educational institutes will begin a second week of closures ahead of a nationwide day of demonstrations tomorrow.

In Lille, northern France, Gaston Berger high school was blockaded early this morning. Students were seen gathering around a large bonfire. 

And over in Caen, north-west France, the gate of Victor Hugo high school was set alight. Rioters appeared to have thrown bins and other large items into a pile before setting it on fire.  

In central Paris, dozens of teenage students demonstrated outside a school while passing cars honked their horns. Some classmates made their way inside to attend lessons.

‘We’re missing our lessons to give you one,’ read one cardboard sign outside the Turgot high school in Paris’s third arrondissement.

In Bordeaux, in the south-west, some students returned to the classroom while others continued to demonstrate in front of riot police.

Some protesters outside the Gustave Eiffel high school aimed fireworks at police, who responded sporadically with tear gas.

In Lille, masked protesters destroyed bus shelters and set fire to dustbins as police fired tear gas towards demonstrators. 

Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu set out a timetable yesterday urging local authorities to prioritise filling gaps left by long-term teacher absences and unfilled posts.

He called a meeting for tomorrow with regional presidents to discuss overhauling the country’s often dilapidated school buildings.

Maud Bregeon, a spokeswoman for the French government, said this morning that Emmanuel Macron’s administration was drafting a law that would make the parents of young people who cause public damage liable for the cost. 

The law, which will be put to the country’s senate this month, would allow ‘drawing funds from family benefits if necessary’.

Ms Bregeon said: ‘We need to establish a form of collective responsibility. If you are participating in a violent movement, and after being ordered to leave by the police, you remain in that violent movement, then joint responsibility may be engaged.’

The nationwide demonstrations and blockades underline a fraught social atmosphere as France’s government embarks on trying to pass a deficit-narrowing 2027 budget. 

France’s ten-year bond yield briefly topped 5 per cent last week, its highest since 2002, as the protests compounded investor concerns over the country’s fiscal outlook.

Officials said the student protests disrupted lessons at 413 high schools today.

The education ministry, which had reported 564 schools were affected at around midday on Friday, said the drop was due to ‘sustained dialogue with high school students. 

The protests began in late September at a high school in a Paris suburb over teacher shortages before spreading nationwide.

‘Our priority is to restore order,’ Ms Bregeon told CNews television today.

French education minister Édouard Geffray said that 24 schools had been burned or ransacked and that 78 employees of the national education system had been injured since the beginning of the demonstrations.

On Monday, BFMTV showed images of police and student skirmishes in Lille.

Since last Monday, around 5,000 people, mostly teenagers, have been arrested nationwide and dozens injured. Teachers and members of the public have been attacked, while damage to property is estimated in the tens of millions of euros.

Paris police chief Patrice Faure, in an open letter published on X on Saturday, said those who had launched the protests no longer controlled them and called on students to abandon blockades in favour of peaceful protest.

Student unions have nevertheless called for a national day of demonstrations tomorrow. Security officials fear that an organised protest in central Paris in particular could see further violence amid concerns that far-Left and anarchist groups could try to take over the protests.

CGT union head Sophie Binet told TF1 television today that CGT union members will attend tomorrow’s demonstrations ‘to protect high school students’.

‘We’ve been appalled by what we have seen over the past ten days and by the unprecedented crackdown that the government has organised against the protests by high school students,’ she said. 

She also slammed the government’s proposal to make parents of rioters liable for damages, calling the motion a ‘populist announcement’, which she said would ‘end up targeting the most vulnerable families’.

The French Human Rights League (LDH) accused security forces of using disproportionate methods against protesters, many of whom are legally minors.

‘We can see that in the instructions given to the police, there is no directive to show restraint, even though they are dealing with children,’ LDH president Nathalie Tehio said.

At Saint-Denis, just north of Paris, students took turns expressing their grievances at an open-air meeting on Sunday.

When you are a student from one of the deprived districts, said one student, ‘the violence is unleashed’.

She referred in particular to one student who had lost his teeth to a police rubber bullet and another who had been hit in the eye.

One 16-year-old boy, Campion, held a placard that read: ‘They say they are listening to us but prefer to gas us.’

‘I don’t understand why the government deploys so much force against a case that is valid – our education, our future,’ he told AFP.

Mr Geffray spoke of far-Left infiltrators who had ‘hijacked’ the movement ‘and engaged in extreme violence’.

‘Clearly, this poses a risk to both our staff and our students,’ he said.

He added that the 78 education staff who had been injured ‘were deliberately targeted because they were employees of the national education system’.