Dozens of people were injured this Saturday in France in clashes during a demonstration against the construction of a water reservoir for agriculture in the town of Sainte-Soline, in the center west of the country. The organization speaks of 200 injured, while the authorities count 35, including five in serious condition. Of these 35, 28 will be police officers.
The French Prime Minister, Elizabeth Borne, has already reacted and considered that it is a wave of intolerable violence. The authorities had mobilized more than three thousand agents for the demonstration and had anticipated the possibility of acts of violence fueled by the wave of protest generated by the approval of the law that raises the retirement age.
For about an hour, the surroundings of the basin became the scene of a violent conflict, with numerous explosions, observed from a distance by the majority of the protesters who remained peaceful.
Several police vehicles were set on fire, until the attackers withdrew and the demonstration returned to relative calm.
During the demonstration, dangerous objects and weapons were seized – petanque balls, incendiary products, knives and axes – and 11 people were arrested.
In the project that is the subject of this demonstration, 16 reservoirs will be built, with a total capacity of about six million cubic meters, mainly in Deux-Sèvres, as part of a project led by a cooperative of 450 farmers with the support of the state.
The objective is to store the water in the open air, after extracting it from the superficial aquifers in winter, to irrigate crops in summer, when rainfall is scarce.
Opponents of the initiative denounce the appropriation of water by agribusiness in times of climate change.
France has been experiencing for several weeks a huge mobilization against the social security reform, whose approval without a vote in the National Assembly led to a succession of violent demonstrations in many French cities.
Source: TSF
