On the morning of Thursday 1 October 2026, around the Saint-Exupéry lycée, in the northern districts of Marseille, a fire brigade response truck is ransacked then set on fire (ICI Provence). According to Actu17, which describes an amateur video, young men, most of them with masked faces, ransack the vehicle, which is then set on fire to the cheers of the crowd. Europe 1 describes a video in which one of them relentlessly attacks the windscreen while another walks around with a firefighter’s jacket over his shoulders. The fire brigade indicate that uniform jackets were stolen (ICI Provence).
A Marseille firefighter was also injured the same day, with a facial fracture, after a projectile was thrown (ICI Provence), without the source explicitly linking this injury to the truck incident. Conversely, TF1 Info writes in its post on the truck that “a firefighter was slightly injured” (translated), and Police & Réalités, which relies on La Provence and on the fire brigade, speaks of a second vehicle “confronted by protesters” (translated) and of a slightly injured firefighter, specifying that the circumstances remain to be established. The two descriptions (“slightly” and “facial fracture”) are not reconciled by the sources read.
The tally of the prefecture of the Bouches-du-Rhône at 6:55 p.m., repeated by France 3, counts “3 buses attacked, 1 of which was totally burned, a truck of the Marseille fire brigade battalion looted then set on fire, as well as 84 fires of street furniture” (translated). France 3 writes that a van engaged on a rubbish fire outside the lycée was “confronted by protesters and set on fire” (translated) and that a first-response vehicle, also on the scene, was likewise set on fire. The Interior Minister condemned on X an act of “serious gratuitous violence” (translated) and wrote: “vandals attacked a fire brigade vehicle: windows smashed, equipment ransacked, then vehicle set on fire” (translated); he promised that the perpetrators would be sought. The sources diverge on a burned bus: Europe 1 places it “near this lycée in the northern districts” (translated), ICI Provence around the La Floride lycée (14th arrondissement), and ICI Provence also reports an attempted fire started from inside the Saint-Exupéry lycée. The prefect of the Bouches-du-Rhône spoke of a “manifest will to be aggressive and to attack public buildings” (translated).
The perpetrators are not identified: Actu17 speaks of “young men, most of them with masked faces” (translated); a police union delegate cited by Europe 1 doubts that they were all high-school students (opinion, not verified).
Follow-up
No specific prosecution, arrest or complaint linked to this truck is reported in the sources read as of 2026-10-04: 68 then 84 arrests are counted across the whole département on 1 October, with no established link to this incident.