Police and firefighters in the French city of Limoges were subjected to attacks by Molotov cocktails and mortar fireworks for at least four hours this week after being lured to a “sensitive” area of the city.
The four-hour-long battle between locals and police and firefighters took place over the course of Monday night and early Tuesday morning. The assaults took place in the district of Val de l’Aurence, which is described as being a “sensitive” area, French government jargon for what others in Europe might term a ‘no go zone’.
The attacks came after firefighters were alerted to a car that had been set on fire at around 11 pm, and soon found themselves being attacked by around a dozen individuals before police then arrived on the scene as well, the newspaper Le Figaro reports.
“It was a real ambush, the attackers obviously wanted to fight,” a source told the newspaper and claimed that the attack looked well-prepared.
During the four-hour battle, at least one driver of a vehicle attempted to ram into officers before being stopped by non-lethal rounds which broke the car windshield and then saw the driver flee the scene.
Several cars were set on fire during the violence, which took place until around 3:30 am int he morning but while no one was reported as being injured, no one was arrested by police either and firefighters were unable to put out any of the car fires, with locals attempting to put them out on their own.
The incident comes just weeks after a mob of around 80 people attacked a police station in Champigny-sur-Marne with mortar fireworks and other projectiles after an incident at a local football match involving the arrest of a local man.
The tactic of local youths setting cars on fire in order to lure out firefighters and police to them ambush and attack them is not a new phenomenon in France and has been seen multiple times in recent years.
The guerilla-like tactic has been seen multiple times, such as in 2018, when youths in the city of Mulhouse ambushed police after setting garbage bins on fire, with multiple groups of youths ambushing officers.
Urban violence has become such a major problem across France that some have described France as teetering on the edge of civil conflict, including the president of the Hauts-de-France Regional Council Xavier Bertrand last year.
“There is today a real risk of civil war,” Bertrand said and went on to add: “The president of the Republic must do everything to avoid it, and this requires above all the end of crimes not being punished. Any sanction must result in a sentence at the end.”
Should a civil conflict erupt in France, a poll revealed that just shy of a majority of French would support the country’s armed forces intervening to restore order, even if the government did not request them to do so.
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