Paris police said the police car was attacked with a crowbar
Paris:
The French government on Saturday denounced “unacceptable violence” during a protest led by the far left against police brutality, which left officers trapped in their police vehicle after it was attacked, an AFP correspondent said.
The nationwide protest came just under three months after the outright killing by a police officer outside Paris during a traffic stop sparked more than a week of riots in Paris and elsewhere.
Hundreds of people, dressed in black and hoods, broke off from the main march of several thousand people in Paris
They smashed the windows of a bank branch and threw objects at a police car stuck in traffic, an AFP reporter said.
Paris police said the police car was attacked with a crowbar and that only the intervention of a riot police unit allowed the vehicle’s release.
A video later published by the BFMTV channel and shared on the internet showed a group of masked protesters running after the car and kicking it repeatedly, while a man smashed a window with a crowbar.
An officer gets out and waves his service weapon but does not fire it and gets back into the vehicle.
“We see where hatred against the police leads,” Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin wrote on X, formerly Twitter, denouncing “unacceptable violence” against police.
Paris police chief Laurent Nunez said three people have been arrested over the incident.
Unions said around 80,000 people were expected to protest across France, in response to a call from the radical left, including the far-left party France Unbowed (LFI), but police put the number at 13,800.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
