Firefighters in the French department of Vaucluse will now be escorted by police when responding to fires in “sensitive areas” following an attack over the weekend.
The incident occurred on Friday in the commune of Cavaillon and saw firefighters lured to an area at around 11:45 pm after suspects lit garbage on fire. Once the firefighters were on the scene, the suspects attacked them, BFMTV reports.
The attack involved rocks along with petanque balls being thrown at the fire engine and even a Molotov cocktail launched towards the firefighters. While none of the emergency services personnel were injured, Commander David Durupt, head of the Cavaillon Fire Department, called it a deliberate attack.
“There was a clear intention to harm,” Durupt said and added: “The trash was probably burned intentionally, the objective was clearly to attack the firefighters.”
According to broadcaster TF1, violence in Cavaillon has dramatically increased by 23 per cent this year and added that in the future, firefighters operating in sensitive no-go areas will be escorted by police officers.
Attacks on firefighters are not limited to the department of Vaucluse. In Loire-Atlantique firefighters claimed in July that they had been attacked every day since the start of that month.
The attacks led to 15 firefighters in Nantes to protest the violence saying that they were tired of being attacked by members of the public.
In the Alpes-Maritimes department, emergency services workers went as far as creating a series of videos calling on the public not to interfere with them during operations and not to attack them.
One of the videos showed a group of radical far-leftist protesters throw a firebomb or Molotov cocktail at firefighters in the same manner as the attack in Cavaillon.
Firefighters are not the only emergency service workers to be attacked in France. In June of this year, volunteers of the Fédération Nationale de Protection Civile (FNPC/National Federation of Civil Protection) were attacked with acid in the commune of Ygos-Saint-Saturnin.