French Teen's Hand Blown Off in Protest Clash, Second Student Loses Eyesight, as Nationwide School Protest Day Looms Tuesday

Since student blockades began September 17 at a high school in Créteil, the protest movement over classroom conditions has entered its third week, and Monday brought the most serious injury reported yet.

A 15-year-old boy had his hand blown off during a clash between police and demonstrators outside Auguste Béhal high school in Lens, according to François-Xavier Lauch, prefect of Pas-de-Calais. Lauch called it a "very serious incident" and said the teenager's life was not in danger.

The exact cause is disputed. A police union source told AFP the student appeared to have picked up a sting-ball grenade fired by riot police, intending to throw it back, when it exploded in his hand. But a girl who said she was standing near him told the regional paper La Voix du Nord a different account: "He didn't pick it up. I was there, I saw it. He didn't pick it up, he didn't catch it."

Lens Mayor Sylvain Robert said he had only seen video of the aftermath, not how the police operation unfolded. The Guardian reported Lauch said between 150 and 200 protesters had been throwing projectiles at police before riot officers moved in. A regional prosecutor has opened an investigation through France's police watchdog, the General Inspection of the National Police (IGPN), to establish what happened.

Lens was not the only case of serious police-related injury. The Guardian reported that the family of a 16-year-old student in Tours filed a complaint after he lost sight in his right eye last week. A state prosecutor there said the injury was consistent with the impact of a police rubber bullet, and a separate police investigation is underway.

Education Minister Édouard Geffray said at least 190 students have been injured since the protests began, according to the BBC.

School closures easing, but still widespread

By late Monday morning, 413 of France's roughly 3,700 high schools had been disrupted, according to the education ministry, cited by Euronews. That's a 27 percent drop from the same point on Friday, though 40 percent of Monday's affected schools hadn't been hit before. In the Paris region, about a third of the area's 468 lycées for 15- to 17-year-olds were closed, CBS News reported.

At Vauquelin secondary school in Paris's 13th arrondissement, headteacher Carole Zerbib told BFMTV that roughly ten masked youths piled bins and flammable material at the entrance and set them alight, forcing the school to shut for the day. Junior Interior Minister Jean-Didier Berger called the act criminal and demanded the "harshest possible" punishment.

Government's response: benefits bill, review by month's end

Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu has called the students' grievances "legitimate" and ordered ministers to address five demands, including replacing absent teachers and reviewing France's school-day length, among the longest in Europe, according to the Guardian. Repair proposals for dilapidated buildings are due by the end of October, Lecornu said.

Separately, government spokesperson Maud Bregeon told CNews that a "casseurs-payeurs" (vandals pay) bill will go before the Senate on October 27. It would dock family benefits to cover property damage caused by minors or adults, introducing what Bregeon called "a form of collective responsibility."

CGT union leader Sophie Binet criticized the government's timing, telling the Guardian that teacher vacancies left unfilled had doubled over the past decade and class sizes are at record highs. "Amid such anger, a few measures just for show aren't going to satisfy demands," she said, calling instead for an end to budget cuts affecting schools.

Accusations fly over who's driving the unrest

The government has accused hard-left activists of hijacking the movement, per the BBC and CBS. Mathilde Panot, who leads Jean-Luc Mélenchon's France Unbowed bloc in the National Assembly, rejected that framing, telling franceinfo there is "no political response" from the government, "only a policing response." No investigation or evidence has been presented establishing that France Unbowed organized or directed the unrest; the claim remains an accusation from the party's critics, not an established fact.

The French Human Rights League went the other direction, accusing security forces of disproportionate force against protesters, many of them minors. League president Nathalie Tehio told reporters that police instructions "to deal with these children" showed no directive toward restraint.

Epoch Times' on-the-ground reporting from Saint-Denis captured a different texture to parts of the movement than most other outlets, documenting Antifa activists marching alongside students, chants of "Everyone hates the police," and multiple student interviewees framing their participation around opposing "systemic racism" and defending the right to wear hijabs and abayas in school, issues that didn't appear in the classroom-conditions framing used by the BBC, CBS, Guardian, or Euronews.

Fox News separately reported Interior Minister Laurent Nunez's claim that "individuals acting as agitators" moved between schools to incite violence, and quoted the Foundation for Defense of Democracies' Simone Rodan-Benzaquen saying the grievances "were real at first" but pointing to an incident where a Marseille principal was doused in gasoline as evidence the movement had been hijacked by extremists.

What happens next

The IGPN investigation into the Lens incident and the separate police probe into the Tours shooting remain open, with no findings announced. Student unions, including the Union syndicale lycéenne, have called a nationwide "Act III" day of action for Tuesday, October 6, backed by trade unionists, teachers, and parents' groups. The Senate is scheduled to take up the "vandals pay" benefits bill on October 27, the same week Lecornu's ministers are due to present their repair and staffing proposals.