After the violent death of two French police officers, tens of thousands of security forces in Paris have called for more political support.

According to the organizers, despite the rainy weather, around 35,000 police officers demonstrated in front of the Paris National Assembly, the lower house of parliament.

The motto of the rally that unions had called was “Paid to serve, not to die”.

Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin also took part in the protest in front of the National Assembly. When he arrived he was booed and whistled by the demonstrators. "I came to support the police, like all French people," he wrote on Twitter. In an interview with France Inter in the morning, he emphasized that the security forces were “marked by sadness, emotion and anger” after the brutal incidents.

Darmanin's participation in the demonstration also met with incomprehension in political circles - after all, as Minister of the Interior, he is responsible for the police.

The minister had come to recognize his own inaction, said Jordan Bardella of the right-wing Rassemblement National party.

"If the police are not protected, we cannot protect the citizens," said the deputy chairman of the Alliance Police Nationale, Grégory Goupil.

The police are far too poorly equipped.

In addition, the penalties are too low, for example for drug traffickers.

In early May, a police officer was killed while working against drug traffickers in Avignon, southern France.

A few days earlier, a suspected Islamist had fatally injured a policewoman in Rambouillet, south of Paris, with a knife.

In France, regional and departmental elections will take place in just over two weeks, the last mood test before the presidential election in a year.

That is why the demonstration was particularly in the spotlight.

The right-wing populist Marine Le Pen accused the government of inaction: "Anyone who attacks a police officer should face extremely harsh penalties," she stressed.

Justice Minister Eric Dupond-Moretti warned the unions against "playing off the police and the judiciary against each other".

A union representative shouted to applause at the demonstration: "The problem of the police is the judiciary."