France halts use of stun grenades after boy's hand blown off in student protests

France has suspended the use of stun grenades for policing student protests that have swept the country, after a 15-year-old's hand was blown off earlier this week.

Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez said he had requested the pause until the facts of Monday's incident in Lens had been "clarified", with conflicting accounts offered by protesters and officials.

The disruption continued on Wednesday with more than 500 schools fully or partially shut.

Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu has defended the police response, after several groups complained of police using disproportionate force towards teenagers.

In an address to the nation on Wednesday evening, he denied security forces had "orders to confront" the young people.

He said the government would look into the demands made by students and promised they would present a set of proposals at the end of October, ranging from renovating buildings to make more teachers available. He gave no further details.

The "anger of young people does not come from nowhere," he said.

Education Minister Édouard Geffray said 24 schools had been "set alight or vandalised" to such an extent that they would be shut for several weeks, affecting 30,000 pupils.

Hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets on Tuesday to call for better school conditions and in some cities tear gas and water cannon were deployed. The interior ministry said 488 people were arrested and 43 members of the security forces were hurt.

Nuñez told French radio RTL that police watchdog IGPN had opened 18 investigations to determine whether officers had been "proportionate" during the demonstrations, which have spread from high school pupils to their parents, university students and unions.

"There is a police action that raises questions for all of us within the Ministry of the Interior; it's what happened in Lens," he said as he confirmed the suspension of stun grenades - weapons which are considered non-lethal and send out small rubber pellets when they detonate.

The 15-year-old boy's hand was torn off after a so-called anti-encirclement grenade was fired in unclear circumstances near the Auguste Béhal high school in the northern city near Lille.

Authorities have said he picked up the grenade which then exploded, but students have alleged he was hit directly after an officer fired. According to the local prefect, police had been confronted by more than 200 students throwing stones and fireworks.

The national secretary of policing union UNSA said he was sceptical about the move, saying it had been based "on emotion".

"We are dealing with increasingly violent people," Jean-Paul Nascimento told FranceInfo, cautioning that without the weapon to disperse crowds there may be more clashes at close quarters. "That's where there will perhaps be even more injuries," he warned.

Concerns have also been stoked by the case of a 14-year-old hit in the face with a tear gas grenade last week. The boy's lawyer said he had lost several teeth and suffered a fractured jaw in the incident at Saint-Ouen-l'Aumône, north-west of Paris, and a police officer has been charged.

And in a separate development on Wednesday, a 16-year-old suffered a serious hand injury outside a school in Strasbourg, reportedly while handling a mortar firework.

Prosecutors also said an investigation for attempted murder had been opened after a 17-year-old student protester complained an officer "held his head underwater" while trying to arrest him near a river in the north-eastern city of Belfort. French reports say the boy has himself been charged with aggravated assault for allegedly attacking the officer.

Addressing France's National Assembly on Wednesday, both Nuñez and Education Minister Geffray said the speed at which the protests had turned violent was unprecedented.

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Geffray said dozens of headteachers and deputies had been injured, many deliberately so, and alleged the movement had been "very quickly infiltrated by ultra-violent groups".

"We have never seen anything like this," he said of the disorder which officials report has harmed more than 200 students and 700 police officers, and prompted more than 6,600 arrests.

Nuñez later said he found it "excessive to speak of police repression of the movement", insisting that officers were only acting in response to violence and damage.

The national coordinator of the radical-left France Unbowed (LFI) party said that it had taken "several children being maimed for life for Nuñez to give up using grenades against high school students".