In Saint-Etienne, groups of rioters mingled with the parade of more than a thousand yellow vests this Saturday in order to enter a shopping center protected by the police.
A parade of more than a thousand "yellow vests" degenerated Saturday afternoon in the streets of Saint-Etienne when groups of thugs tried to enter a shopping center protected by the police, said a correspondent of the AFP. Police and the CRS fired several teargas grenades to try to keep rioters from entering the mall and throwing projectiles at them.
Heads concealed by masks, scarves or balaclavas, these demonstrators were joined by teenagers who took part in the breakage and fire of many items of street furniture and other objects recovered from shopping center reservations to which they could access.
Fourteen arrests took place, said the mayor LR Saint-Etienne, Gael Perdriau, in a statement sent in the evening, in which he asks the public prosecutor "the greatest severity in the face of these arrested riders . "
Three were for the burning of a Christmas cottage had indicated a little earlier the public prosecutor of the city, adding that a minor had also been arrested in Firminy (Loire) on the sidelines of another demonstration of " yellow vests " as he threw projectiles at policemen. Several light wounded have been identified by firefighters who have helped them, mainly people who are bothered by tear gas.
Scenes of unseen riots in Saint-Etienne
Some "yellow vests" had vainly tried to dissuade the thugs from going into action. A police officer with a baton in his hand, and saying himself "yellow vest" was part of his disgust at these riots unpublished scenes in Saint-Etienne in recent decades.
In the middle of the afternoon all grids for access to this shopping center "Center-Deux", which has 150 shops and a hypermarket, were closed. The parade of nearly 1,500 people had begun in the early afternoon in a good-natured atmosphere, like the previous Saturday, from the prefecture of the Loire, in the center of Saint-Etienne.
Faced with the scenes of violence that continued in the late afternoon, Mayor Gael Perdriau, decided to change the program of festivities of St. Barbara, the patroness of miners, celebrated this December 1 from the museum of the mine of the city and to prematurely close the Christmas market installed on the Place de l'Hotel-de-Ville.
Other demonstrations degenerated in Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, as in Pouzin, in Ardeche, where ten gendarmes and at least one demonstrator were slightly injured, in Bourg-en-Bresse where the clashes caused three minor injuries and where four people were arrested and in Haute-Loire, where the prefecture was burned after the jet of molotov cocktails.