Metz (AFP)

Eight opponents of the project to bury nuclear waste in Bure (Meuse) were dislodged Friday wood trees Lejuc, reinvested on Thursday, where work must be done for the future Cigeo storage site, and were arrested, has - we learned from the prefecture.

Operations to bring down the eight antinuclear, present on six platforms installed in trees, ended shortly before 20H00, told AFP the prefecture of the Meuse.

They were arrested once on the ground and, said in a statement the prefecture, "all illegal installations were systematically dismantled".

During the raking of the woods on Friday morning, the gendarmes fell on "some installations at the top of the trees, on the edge of the Lejuc wood, on the side adjoining another forest," detailed the director of cabinet of the prefecture, Jean-Michel Radenac.

In the morning, firefighters from the Hazardous Research and Intervention Group (Grimp) are mounted in the trees to secure people. Specialized gendarmes in the intervention at height went to their contact to make them descend.

Nine other people have been arrested since Thursday afternoon and some have been released, said the chief of staff.

Among them, "five protesters, some holders of knives and by destination, were arrested while they were trying to get into the woods," the statement said.

On Thursday, "a dozen individuals dressed in black, hooded, helmeted, armed with Molotov cocktails and steel balls" had ambushed "the platoon of mobile gendarmes who constantly monitor the site by throwing projectiles at them, had told Mr. Radenac.

The group, joined by 20 to 30 opponents, had entered the Lejuc woods where barricades had been erected and inflamed to slow the progress of the gendarmes. He had dispersed in the early evening.

The antinuclear led this action "to reaffirm their opposition to the project of landfill radioactive waste Cigéo, nuclear and its world, industrial, colonial, military," they had said in a statement.

Occupied by opponents since the summer of 2016, Lejuc Wood was evacuated by some 500 gendarmes on February 22, 2018.

The National Agency for the Management of Radioactive Waste (Andra), which leads the Cigeo project - which aims to bury 500 meters underground the most radioactive waste or long-lived waste from the French nuclear fleet - must carry out work in this area. site, located in the municipality of Mandres-en-Barrois, near Bure.

© 2019 AFP