Masked youths set fire to Paris school doors with 100 pupils trapped inside as staff fighting the blaze through a letterbox were blocked by rioters Horrifying footage showed hooded youths feeding the flames at the entrance of a vocational chemistry school in the French capital on Monday morning, forcing terrified staff and students to retreat upstairs while firefighters raced to the scene. Around 100 pupils and members of staff were confined inside Lycée Nicolas-Louis Vauquelin in Paris’s 13th arrondissement after a group of about ten masked, black-clad youths arrived shortly before 8am and began attacking the metal entrance doors. Headmistress Carole Zerbib said the outsiders,who she insisted were not pupils from the school, hurled bins, a sofa and rental bicycles against the doorway, then set them alight with flammable liquid. Mortar fireworks were fired, and heavy objects smashed into the glass, cracking panes. One staff member was struck in the face by a shard of glass. Staff tried to extinguish the blaze from inside by pushing an extinguisher nozzle through the letterbox slot, only to be blocked by the group outside, who continued to pile material onto the fire. Video recorded at the scene captured the principal ordering the confined students to move back and go up to the first floor as the flames intensified. “When we heard the banging on the door, the attempts to set fire, and the smell of spilled gasoline, we thought: what’s going to happen to us? We felt in danger,” the headmistress said. She described the assault as a “déchaînement de violences”, an outbreak of violence that was rapid and coordinated. Pupils who had been arriving for lessons were ordered inside for safety from about 8am. Further fires were lit around 9 am. Paris firefighters extinguished the last blaze, which had been heavily fed by the barricade of rubbish and furniture, and the school was evacuated shortly before 10 am. Lessons were cancelled for the day. No serious injuries were reported. Junior interior minister Jean-Didier Berger condemned the attack as “criminal acts that fall under the law and must be punished in the harshest possible way.” The incident came on the eve of a planned nationwide day of action by high-school students. French teenagers have been blockading schools for days over teacher shortages, overcrowded classes and crumbling buildings. By late Monday morning, more than 400 schools had faced disruption, according to reports, with further tensions noted at other Paris lycées and in cities including Lyon and Lille. The Vauquelin attack was the first blockade call at that particular school since the protests began. Education officials have warned that the government is preparing measures to make families pay for damage caused during the unrest.