Earlier, the gendarmerie reported the first clashes in the neighboring department of Vienne where protesters cut barriers to access a high-speed lane, but were pushed back by the police. At the request of the local prefecture, the SNCF diverted the trains on the "secondary network" between Poitiers and Angoulême.

The prefect of Deux-Sèvres, Emmanuelle Dubée, also reported on BFMTV attacks of "armed black blocks" in the afternoon against a checkpoint and a gendarmerie roadblock.

Military trucks, quads, helicopters: the police had begun to take position on Friday morning around the "basin" under construction in Sainte-Soline, theater at the end of October of the last demonstration against this project of water reserves, also prohibited.

The authorities expect the arrival in the department, Saturday, of 7,000 to 10,000 opponents of these water reservoirs intended for agricultural irrigation, including "about 1,500 radical activists trained in violence," according to Ms. Dubée. More than a thousand demonstrators have already arrived on Friday, many groups hooded and dressed in black, AFP journalists found.

"We will see extremely harsh images because there is a very large mobilization of the far left and those who want to attack the gendarmes and maybe kill gendarmes and kill institutions," Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin told Cnews.

The sixteen "basins" planned for the Sèvre Niortaise © Cléa PÉCULIER / AFP

The prefect of Deux-Sèvres evoked at midday "significant seizures of objects constituting weapons or weapons by destination" during controls before the demonstration.

"We seized petanque balls, slingshots, blunt objects, incendiary products such as mortars (...) There are also knives, axes, "detailed at the same press briefing General Samuel Dubuis, commander of the gendarmerie region of New Aquitaine.

"Base camp"

The organizers of the rally - the collective "Bassines non merci", the environmental movement of the Soulupings of the Earth and the agricultural union Confédération paysanne - have set up a camp "near the demonstration area, under the nose and beard of the prefectural device and the many controls on the zone".

"As the country rises up to defend pensions, we will simultaneously stand up to defend water," the organizers said.

Sixteen reservoirs, with a total capacity of about 6 million cubic meters, are to be built, mainly in the Deux-Sèvres, as part of a project led by a cooperative of 450 farmers with the support of the State.

It aims to store water drawn from surface aquifers in winter in the open air, in order to irrigate crops in summer when rainfall is scarce.

Its supporters make it a condition for the survival of farms in the face of the threat of recurrent droughts.

Gendarmes arrive at the site of the water reserve under construction in Sainte-Soline, on March 24, 2023 in the Deux-Sèvres © THIBAUD MORITZ / AFP

Opponents of the "basins" denounce a "grabbing" of water by "agribusiness" at a time of climate change, and demand a moratorium on their constructions to launch "a real territorial project" on the "sharing of water".

© 2023 AFP