Paris ? Thousands of French police, who came under fire from bullets, Molotov cocktails and rocks thrown by angry youths in France’s worst civil unrest in decades, will receive bonus pay for their efforts to quell the violence, a top police union official said Friday.

National police chief Michel Gaudin told a conference of police Thursday that about 22,000 officers will receive additional payments of $350 each, according to Jean-Yves Bugelli, assistant secretary general of the Alliance police union.

The three weeks of car burnings, vandalism and clashes between youths and officers erupted in impoverished suburban housing projects that are home to many immigrants and their French-born children.

Police were stretched thin – often clocking overtime hours, working frequent shifts and being asked to hold off on vacations.

As the violence raged, more than 10,000 officers were deployed across the country through the night. Some riot police reinforcements were called in from the French Antilles in the Caribbean.

At least 3,200 suspects were arrested and more than 100 police officers were injured in the violence, France’s worst civil unrest since the student-worker riots of 1968.