Masked rioters attack highway and clash with police in Limoges, France

Paris: Dozens of masked assailants wielding metal bars, mortars and molotov cocktails attacked cars on a highway and clashed with police early on Saturday in the city of Limoges in central France, officials said.

The overnight clashes left nine police wounded, according to authorities, who said they suspected a gang turf war.

The unrest came in the middle of France’s summer tourism season.

The armed attackers descended on the RN141 throughway and tried to block it during a battle with police, according to officials.

“There were between 100 and 150 masked individuals, armed with molotov cocktails, fireworks, stones, iron bars and baseball bats,” the local police union leader Laurent Nadeau said.

Police responded with teargas and crowd-control munitions.

Mayor Émile Roger Lombertie called the rioters an “urban guerrilla group”.

“They’re organised, structured, there’s a plan, weapons,” he said. “This was not a spontaneous protest to complain about something. No pretext, nothing. It’s about destroying things and showing the territory belongs to you.”

Prosecutors said vehicles, some with families and children, were attacked but there were no immediate reports of wounded drivers. “None of the motorists were physically assaulted. However, several are particularly shocked,” prosecutors said in a statement.

Unrest had erupted nearby, in Val de l’Aurence, on the night of 14 July, France’s national day. Lombertie said this “very poor neighbourhood, with young people from immigrant backgrounds” had become a “lawless zone”.

The Limoges prosecutor, Émilie Abrantes, said that although the neighbourhood was known for drug trafficking, there was no evidence linking the unrest to recent investigations into drug trafficking.

France’s interior ministry said it would deploy a special security force to the city.