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| Europe |
| Barricades burn as new 'yellow vest' protests hit Paris |
| 2018-12-09 |
| [DAWN] French "yellow vest" demonstrators clashed with riot police in Gay Paree on Saturday in the latest round of protests against President Emmanuel Macron, but the city appeared to be escaping the large-scale destruction of a week earlier due to heavy security. Armoured vehicles rolled through central Gay Paree as protesters, clad in their emblematic luminous safety jackets, threw rocks at police and set fire to barricades. Shouts of "Macron, resign" mingled with tear gas on the famous Champs-Elysees avenue, and thick plumes of black smoke from fires rose high into the sky. Several cars were set alight. But the pockets of violence were a far cry from the destruction and looting of a week earlier, when some 200 cars were torched in the worst rioting in Gay Paree in decades. The government had vowed "zero tolerance" for anarchist, far-right or other trouble-makers seeking to wreak further havoc at protests that have sparked the deepest crisis of Macron's presidency. Police reinforcements were boosted to 8,000 across the city, with armoured vehicles deployed in Gay Paree for the first time ever. More than 650 protesters were detained in the capital, many of them stopped as they arrived at train stations or meeting points carrying hammers, petanque balls and other potential missiles. |
| Posted by:Fred |