Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu of France said he had ordered localized curfews for Monday night in some French towns and neighborhoods, as the government moved to reassert control after the worst riots in decades hit cities around the country.
While ministers in Mr. Lecornu’s government acknowledged failures in handling the weekend riots, the prime minister struck a different tone, saying that the police had done a good job against a “shadowy network” of far-left instigators who he said were seeking to orchestrate “a profound disorder in the country leading up to the presidential election.”
“While we witnessed very difficult scenes involving violence against property, no one was killed, and that is a miracle,” Mr. Lecornu said, emerging from an emergency meeting of ministers on Monday afternoon.
He told reporters that a massive police operation was underway — with “practically” 200 investigators in Paris alone working to track down the looters.
“My determination to restore order is absolute,” Mr. Lecornu said, vowing to use “whatever tools are at the government’s disposal.”
He did not provide specifics on where the curfews were expected, saying only they were for places that had been especially affected by unrest and that a map would be provided later on Monday.
Earlier in the day, France’s interior minister, Laurent Nuñez, offered a mea culpa on national radio, saying that the police had been underprepared to deal with the scale of the riots that spun off from the mostly peaceful protests held across the country. Mr. Nuñez said he had offered his resignation to President Emmanuel Macron but that it had not been accepted.
The justice minister, Gérald Darmanin, also acknowledged that the authorities had “undeniably failed” in the face of the violence — the biggest unrest to hit France in years — and said on French television that there had been “a failure in intelligence.”
The government estimated that at least 3,000 businesses across the country had been pillaged over the weekend, double the figure given on Sunday by the federation of commerce and distribution.
Mr. Lecornu said that workers affected by the riots could access partial unemployment payments starting on Tuesday, and that the government was pushing insurance companies to accelerate the process of reimbursements.
“We must enable shopkeepers to get back on their feet very quickly,” he said.
It was unclear if those words would assure rattled citizens and furious mayors, many of whom demanded answers from the national government on Monday.
Benoît Payan, the mayor of Marseille, blamed the government and the police for “delivering” that city, France’s second largest, to “looters and rioters.”
Speaking on French radio, he accused the region’s prefect of inflating the number of rioters that had attacked city hall and local stores, and said that he was seeking “explanations” and “the guarantee that this will not happen again” from the government.
“I want compensation down to the last cent,” he added, saying: “You cannot let a country sink into a political crisis without an answer.”
After sporadic episodes of violence and looting persisted in several French cities on Sunday — including in Paris, where the police chief said 351 people had been arrested — several cities undertook measures aimed at restoring calm on Monday.
Even before Mr. Lecornu said he had instructed prefects to impose targeted curfews in certain places, a few cities had announced their plans to do so.
The authorities in Marseille banned gatherings throughout the city from 12 to 8 p.m. that day, a local official said on social media. In Denain, a small town in northern France, city officials said on social media that a curfew would be in place from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m. through Oct. 25.
The mayor of Coulaines, in western France, made his announcement after the prime minister’s call, saying his town would have a curfew for minors after 11 p.m.
“I think that at the state level, it would be necessary to implement similar measures,” he said in a video posted on social media. “And why not declare a state of emergency if the raids and looting continue?”
Amid calls for calm and order, there were questions about what would happen next.
The students who started a protest movement more than a month ago by blockading their high schools to demand better conditions are now on a two-week vacation. However, other groups have joined the protests in solidarity and to highlight their own grievances, with some seemingly determined to keep the movement going.
A group of university students blocked entrances to the Louvre Museum on Monday morning, preventing it from opening its doors. Students also blockaded the Paris campus of Sciences Po, one of France’s most prestigious universities. The police were called to the scene, according to student unions and a spokeswoman for the university.
Some protesters who took part in the weekend’s huge demonstrations have already called for another mass action next weekend. On Monday, Mr. Nuñez said that police numbers would be reinforced across the country, “particularly this weekend.”
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