Limoges: two nights of clashes between police and young people from a priority district

Europe 1 with AFP 5:42 p.m., August 3, 2022

The Val de l'Aurence district in Limoges was the scene of clashes between dozens of hooded young people and the police, in the nights from Monday to Tuesday and Tuesday to Wednesday, we learned on Wednesday with the authorities.

During the night from Tuesday to Wednesday, a CRS-8 police officer was slightly injured by mortar fire and two individuals were arrested, said the secretary general of the Haute-Vienne prefecture Jean-Philippe Aurignac.

A unit deployed at the request of Darmanin

The CRS-8, a unit created to travel quickly throughout the territory, was deployed Tuesday evening in Limoges at the request of Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin.

According to a police union source, a hundred young people took part in the clashes.

During the night of Monday to Tuesday, three cars were burned during the first clashes between the police and around forty individuals.

The clashes lasted nearly five hours, according to the prefecture, which denounces "unacceptable urban violence".

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The clashes began after the arrival of firefighters supported by the police to put out a car fire.

Upon their arrival in this priority classified district, the police were greeted by jets of Molotov cocktails, firework mortars and projectiles of all kinds, detailed a police source to AFP.

Young people aged 13 to 17 mainly

During that night, five national police crews and one municipal police crew were mobilized.

They responded with disencirclement grenades, according to the same source.

According to the secretary general of the prefecture, most of the individuals opposed to the police during these two nights are young people aged 13 to 17, from sub-Saharan Africa and Mayotte.

"It's a neighborhood where the violent drift has been going on for years, with the structuring of really organized gangs, mainly dealers, organized around bands of Mahorais", commented to AFP the mayor LR of Limoges Emile-Roger Lombertie, who is calling for additional police to deal with "these 70-90 people" seeking to be "totally masters of the neighborhood".

"I found myself in guerrilla territory"

"I found myself in guerrilla territory taking my son to the crèche", discovering the main road of the district "strewn with stones, cartridges, Molotov cocktails, broken bottles", testified a mother on Wednesday morning, saying that they come across this group of "young people who feel totally unpunished" on a daily basis.

According to a 43-year-old nurse, a resident of the neighborhood, contacted by telephone, this "gang" practices "drug trafficking openly", with "many recruited minors", which "makes mothers sick".

The Val de l'Aurence is an area of ​​2,500 inhabitants located at the far west of Limoges.

Resulting from the policy of construction of large housing estates of the years 1960-70, it is being rehabilitated and classified as a "priority district" like eight other districts of Limoges.