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Accident car in Pamiers in the Ariège department

Photo: Valentine Chapuis / AFP

A protest by farmers in the south of France has ended fatally.

As the public prosecutor's office in Foix announced, a car broke through a roadblock at a blockade post on a national road from Toulouse towards Andorra and fatally hit a farmer.

Her husband and a daughter were critically injured.

The car entered the national highway despite a closure and then crashed into a wall made of straw bales in the darkness, behind which demonstrators were sitting under a tent.

The car crashed into a tractor-trailer and hit the victims.

According to the statement, the public prosecutor's office does not assume any intent.

The three occupants of the car were being questioned and the driver was sober.

Farmers in France expanded their protest actions after a meeting of agricultural associations with Prime Minister Gabriel Attal on Monday evening.

South of Lyon, the important north-south A7 motorway near Albon was blocked by around 20 farmers with their tractors in both directions during the night, as the prefecture announced.

Spain highway blocked, fires on tracks

According to the authorities, the blockades on several highways in the Toulouse area in southern France continued on Tuesday.

The motorway from Bordeaux towards Spain was interrupted in both directions in Bayonne, not far from the border.

Rail traffic between Bordeaux and Toulouse continued to be disrupted by protesting farmers on Tuesday.

The railway operator SNCF reported fires near the tracks.

The access to the nuclear power plant in Golfech had previously been blocked by farmers in southern France, as the newspaper “La Dépêche du Midi” reported.

Near the Spanish border near Perpignan, farmers occupied a toll booth on a highway.

There were also protests on Monday in Alsace on the German-French border near Lauterbourg.

French farmers, together with German farmers, blocked the bridge on a country road that connects Germany and the A35 motorway on the left bank of the Rhine towards Strasbourg, as the newspaper "Les Dernières Nouvelles d'Alsace" reported.

As in Germany, the protests in France are directed against, among other things, the price of agricultural diesel.

Other issues include complicated bureaucracy, the income situation and high energy costs.

In southern areas, the water supply to companies is increasingly becoming a problem due to climate change.

fek/dpa/Reuters