More than 400 schools in France closed as student demonstrations turn violent

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About 400 schools ​in France are expected to remain closed on Friday after student protests escalated into ⁠violence with some building torched.

The country’s intelligence agencies briefed a government crisis meeting on Thursday that the wave of protests was initiated by hard-left politicians, a person close to the prime minister said.

The protests against teacher shortages ⁠and dilapidated school buildings erupted in the Paris region last month but have turned increasingly violent as they spread nationwide, with dozens injured and with police making hundreds of arrests.

"There are a little over 400 schools and other educational establishments that I know of that will be closed," French Education ⁠Minister Edouard Geffray ​said ⁠in an interview with broadcaster France 2 late Thursday.

According to close to ⁠Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu, intelligence agencies told ​a ⁠crisis meeting on Thursday ‌that the protest movement had been initiated by politicians from the hard left, including ‌members of La France Insoumise (LFI).

LFI ‌lawmaker Louis Boyard denied the claim in comments to French broadcasters.

Student protesters started fires in at least two ‌high schools on Thursday, while teachers ​were inadvertently splashed with petrol at ‌a third in the ⁠southern city of Marseille, officials said. ⁠At least one car was torched in Strasbourg ‌in the east ​and riot police clashed ‌with youths in ​Toulouse in the southwest.

Some of the worst unrest on Thursday was in Marseille.

At the city's Victor Hugo high school, the two teachers were inadvertently splashed as a student attempted to throw gasoline into a trash bin. Earlier the prosecutor's office had said the teachers had been assaulted and "doused in petrol".

Outside Marseille's Saint-Exupery high school, hundreds of young people forced firefighters ⁠to flee their truck and then set it alight. Public transport in the city, France's second largest, was suspended after staff members were injured in the unrest.

A school was set ablaze in the western city of Nantes, fire crews said, and the facade of another suffered fire damage in Le Havre in the north.

In the Parisian suburb of Saint-Denis, crowds of young people massed in front of a line of police. One student held up a sign that read: "Can we explain ourselves without being teargassed?"

French education minister Edouard Geffray said on Thursday evening that he would meet representatives of staff unions, parent associations and student associations on Friday.