Police and masked activists clashed Saturday at a protest against a highway project in southern France, leaving five people injured, local officials said.
Thousands of demonstrators ignored a ban on the gathering to protest at the site of the A-69 highway between Castres and Toulouse in the southwest.
A police officer who was hit by a Molotov cocktail, two paramilitary gendarmes and two protesters were injured during the clashes, regional authorities said.
Ecologists and left-wing activists are trying to stop the construction of a highway extension, which scientists say will destroy wetlands, agricultural lands, trees and underground water sources.
The first clashes broke out around 3pm (1pm GMT) when “radicalized protesters… determined to commit acts of violence” tried to reach a main road, according to a statement from local officials.
Riot police used tear gas to disperse the demonstrations and keep them off the road to the construction site. Some protesters fired fireworks and threw Molotov cocktails at security forces.
The Tarn region prefecture denounced “extremely violent attacks with catapults” and said the crowd contained “1,200 radical individuals.”
They had “clearly come to cause damage without any connection with the issue” of the highway, said a statement from Prefect Michel Vilbois.
“We have a duty to intervene,” said an activist from the climate campaign group Extinction Rebellion. “As long as we are there, the highway will not continue,” she added.
Organizers of the protest near the village of Puylaurens, called by the Roue Libre group, said 7,000 activists showed up. The prefecture estimated the number at 1,600.
About 1,600 police and gendarmes were deployed to tackle the protest.
The project, which started in early 2023, has the support of most local elected officials and is expected to be operational by the end of 2025.
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