The Nation Newspaper

Tag: French police

  • French police fire tear gas in Paris to halt angry protests

    FRENCH riot police fired tear gas and water cannon in Paris yesterday, trying to stop thousands of yellow-vested protesters from converging on the presidential palace to express their anger at high taxes and French President Emmanuel Macron.

    Security officials imposed a lockdown on parts of central Paris, determined to prevent a repeat of the rioting a week ago that damaged a major monument, injured 130 people and tarnished the country’s global image.

    Blue armored vehicles rumbled across cobblestone streets from the Arc de Triomphe across toward eastern Paris as scattered demonstrations spread around the city. Police were mounted on horses and surrounded protesters with trained dogs. A ring of steel surrounded the Elysee Palace itself, as police stationed trucks and reinforced steel barriers in streets throughout the entire neighborhood.

    Many protesters were  hurt in yesterday’s s clashes with police.

    Paris police said 30 people were injured, including three police officers.

    Some stores along the Champs-Elysee had boarded up their windows with plywood, making the neighborhood appear like it was bracing for a hurricane. Angry protesters on Saturday tried to rip the boards off.

    Protesters threw flares and other projectiles and set fires but were repeatedly pushed back by tear gas and water cannon. By mid-afternoon, more than 700 people had been stopped and questioned, and more than 400 were being held in custody, according to a Paris police spokeswoman.

    Despite the repeated skirmishes, yesterday’s  anti-government protests appeared less chaotic and violent than a week ago, when crowds defaced the Arc de Triomphe, set vehicles ablaze and looted high-end stores in the city’s worst rioting since 1968.

    Prized Paris monuments and normally bustling shopping meccas were locked down Saturday at the height of the holiday shopping season. The Eiffel Tower and Louvre Museum were among the many tourist attractions that closed for the day, fearing damages amid a new round of protests. Subway stations in the center of town were shut down.

    The yellow vest movement  named after the fluorescent outerwear French drivers must keep in their vehicles  started as a protest against higher taxes for diesel and gas, but quickly expanded to encompass wide frustration at stagnant incomes, the rising cost of living and other grievances.

    Macron on Wednesday agreed to abandon the fuel tax hike, which aimed to wean France off fossil fuels and uphold the Paris climate agreement, but that hasn’t defused the anger.

  • French police avert ‘imminent’ attack, arrest four suspects

    An “imminent” terror attack on French soil has been averted with the arrest of four suspects in Montpellier, Interior Minister Bruno Le Roux said.

    The BBC reports that three men and a girl of 16 were found with bomb-making materials by anti-terrorist police in a raid on a flat in the southern city.

    Home-made explosives similar to those used in the Paris attacks of November 2015 were discovered.

    Reports suggested that the girl had made jihadist declarations online.

    Since the beginning of 2015, at least 230 people have been killed in jihadist attacks in France.

    Last week, a soldier received minor injuries when a machete-wielding man tried to enter the Louvre museum in Paris.

    The man, a 29-year-old Egyptian named Abdullah Hamamy, was shot and critically injured.

     

     

  • French police report shootout and explosion in Paris

    Police officials in France last night reported a shootout in a Paris restaurant and an explosion in a bar near a Paris stadium. It was unclear if the events were linked.

    BFM television said  there were several dead in the restaurant shooting in the 10th arrondissement of the capital. Two police officials confirmed the shooting but had no information about casualties.

    Also last night , two explosions were heard outside the Stade de France stadium north of Paris during a France-Germany friendly football match.

    A police official confirmed one explosion in a bar near the stadium. It is unclear whether there are casualties.

    Two explosions  were heard  in the stadium .

    Sirens were immediately heard, and a helicopter was circling overhead.

    The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to be publicly named.

    The attack came as France has heightened security measures ahead of a major global climate conference that starts in two weeks, out of fear of violent protests and potential terrorist attacks.

    Emilioi Macchio, from Ravenna, Italy, was at the Carillon bar near the restaurant that was targeted, having a beer on the sidewalk when the shooting started. He said he didn’t see any gunmen or victims, but hid behind a corner then ran away.

    “It sounded like fireworks,” he said.

    France has been on edge since deadly attacks by Islamic extremists in January on satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo and a kosher grocery that left 20 dead, including the three attackers.

     

  • French police kill gunmen in twin attacks, free 16 hostages

    With explosions and gunfire, French security forces  yesterday ended a three-day terror rampage around Paris, killing the two al-Qaida-linked brothers who staged a murderous rampage at a satirical newspaper, and an associate who seized a kosher supermarket to try to help them escape.

    It was the worst terror spree France has seen in decades. At least, seven people were killed yesterday — the three terrorists and at least four hostages — two days after 12 people were massacred in the newspaper attack. Sixteen hostages were freed yesterday , one from the printing plant and 15 from the grocery store.

    The fate of a fourth suspect — the wife of the supermarket attacker — remained unclear, and Paris shut down a famed Jewish neighbourhood amid fears that a wider terror cell might launch further attacks. France’s interior minister warned his shaken nation to remain “extremely vigilant.”

    The four attackers had ties to each other and to terrorism that reached back years and extended from Paris to al-Qaida in Yemen. They epitomized Western authorities’ greatest fear: Islamic radicals who trained abroad and came home to stage attacks.

    Said and Cherif Kouachi, the brothers who attacked newspaper Charlie Hebdo on Wednesday, came out with their guns blazing Friday evening after an all-day hostage siege at a printing plant northeast of Paris, a French police official said. They were killed and their hostage was freed, authorities said.

    An accomplice, Amedi Coulibaly, took at least five hostages yesterday  afternoon at a kosher grocery in Paris — then died in a nearly simultaneous raid there, said Gael Fabiano of the UNSA police union. Several people were rescued from the Porte de Vincennes grocery store.

    Police said at least four hostages there were killed.

    France has been on high alert since the massacre Wednesday in Paris at the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo that left 12 people dead. Behind that attack were Cherif Kouachi, 32, and his 34-year-old brother Said.

    The next day, a gunman shot a policewoman to death in a gunfight just south of Paris. Police later identified the gunman as Coulibaly, who had been a co-suspect with Cherif Kouachi in a court case involving terrorism that never made it to trial.

    The Kouachi brothers led police on a chase around northeast France, robbing a gas station Thursday and stealing a car Friday morning before seizing hostages at a printing plant in Dammartin-en-Goele, a small industrial town near Charles de Gaulle airport.

  • Briton held over children’s murders in France

    A British man is due to be brought before a court in France where he is expected to be formally charged with the murders of his two children, Sky News reports.

    The man, named by the Foreign Office as Julian Stevenson, was held after the bodies of his son and daughter were found by police in his flat in Saint-Priest, a suburb of Lyon. Their throats had been slit.

    The children have been named in local reports as Mathew, 10, and Carla, five.

    Stevenson – who was said to be unemployed – had been living in France for some time, possibly around 10 years.

    The 47-year-old and his French ex-wife, an assistant accountant, were said to have recently gone through a bitter divorce.

    The children lived with her in the Isere region after she won custody.

    They are believed to have been staying with their father for the first time at the weekend, who had visitation rights, but only in the presence of another person.

    The children’s mother is said to have been worried about the visit and had come to find them when she saw her ex-husband in the stairwell of the four-storey block of flats.

    His clothes were reportedly stained with blood and she raised the alarm.

    Reports suggested she had gone to his home after he failed to return the children following the visit.