Bayonne (AFP)
Hundreds of people demonstrated Saturday at the end of the day on the streets of Bayonne, 8 kilometers from Biarritz where the G7 is held, before being dispersed by a very important police device, which made use of water cannons and tear gas, AFP reporters said.
Protesters, including many young people, sporadically chanted slogans anti-capitalist or hostile to the police, wandering the streets of Bayonne, random police stops on their course.
After clashes with police in different parts of the city, protesters were forced to retreat to pedestrian streets in the center, where they ended up facing a dam on a bridge again.
For more than an hour of face-to-face contact, the police repeatedly used tear gas and at least one de-encircling grenade.
Around 8:30 pm (18:30 GMT), the event was being dispersed. The prefecture had at this stage not mentioned arrest.
For several days, rumors ran about the organization of an unauthorized demonstration on the sidelines of the G7, near Biarritz, surrounded by law enforcement.
The prefect of the department of the Pyrénées-Atlantiques had reinforced Friday night the perimeter of protection, compared to the device that had been envisaged mid-August, extending it to a large part of the center of Bayonne (50.000 inhabitants), with increased power of control and police searches in this area.
As early as Friday, Bayonne traders began to protect their windows with wooden panels and, on Saturday, Bayonne presented the appearance of a dead city, protected by a very strong police presence, helped by some reinforcements from the German police.
In the middle of the day, on the other hand, an anti-G7 demonstration, authorized by the authorities, took place peacefully, from Hendaye to the Spanish border town of Irun, 4 km away, gathering 15,000 people according to the organizers, 9,000 according to the authorities.
Seven other "pacifist rallies" are also scheduled to be held in the middle of the day in neighboring cities of Biarritz to symbolically "encircle" the G7.
© 2019 AFP