Watch: Thousands protest in France after Le Pen election success

Thousands of protesters took to the streets of France on Sunday night after Marine Le Pen’s hard-Right National Rally (RN) won the first round of the country’s parliamentary election.

Videos showed a motorbike and bins on fire, with rioters smashing shop fronts and others setting off fireworks. Riot police were filmed throwing tear gas into heavily crowded areas.

The RN and its allies took 33 per cent of the vote, followed by a Left-wing bloc on 28 per cent and president Emmanuel Macron’s centrists with just 20 per cent, official results from the interior ministry showed on Monday.

Al Jazeera reported that a few thousand anti-RN protesters later attended a rally of the Leftist alliance in Paris’s Place de la Republique. Protests also erupted in Lyon, Nantes and other major cities.

Najiya Khaldi, a 33-year-old teacher, told Al Jazeera she felt “disgust, sadness and fear” at the RN’s strong results. “I am not used to demonstrating,” she said. “I think I came to reassure myself, to not feel alone.”

Another protester told the AP news agency that France was “going towards the extreme”. Cynthia Fefoheio, a 19-year-old political science student, said: “People don’t understand that this will impact us for years and years.

“This is a France of hate that is growing, not a France of solidarity and union.”

Ms Le Pen has sought to clean up the image of a party known for racism and anti-Semitism – a tactic that has worked amid voter anger at Mr Macron, the high cost of living and growing concerns over immigration.

The results were a huge setback for the French president, who had called the snap election after he was trounced by the RN in European Parliament elections last month.

The final outcome will depend on days of alliance-building before next week’s run-off vote.