The night from Friday to Saturday was disrupted by arson attacks on vehicles in the Jean Monnet district of Cholet and the throwing of stones at police officers and firefighters. This is the second consecutive night that this district has suffered such incidents.
This night from Friday to Saturday, several cars were set on fire in the Jean Monnet district of Cholet.
According to the Maine-et-Loire Prefecture, these arson attacks were started by several groups.
“Around twenty masked individuals, moving in small groups, set fire to several vehicles between 1 a.m. and 2:30 a.m., then at the end of the night,” indicates the Prefecture which adds that firefighters and police officers were the targets of projectiles during their intervention.
“The police had to use force to disperse the perpetrators of the damage,” adds the press release.
No injuries were reported, but this is the second night that such incidents have taken place in this neighborhood in the south of the city.
Two nights of incidents and damage in the south of the town of Cholet.
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© GoogleMaps
Indeed, already during the night from Thursday to Friday, municipal police officers were targeted by mortar fire in the same Jean Monnet district. It happened in the early evening, around 7 p.m. Later in the evening, municipal and national police officers who intervened for damage to street furniture were attacked by around forty individuals, according to the Prefecture of Maine-et-Loire. They were thrown stones.
Then, it was around 1 a.m. during a new intervention by the firefighters for a fire alarm in an abandoned building, there were, once again, projectiles thrown against the firefighters and the police forces.
These acts “seriously endanger the safety of the national police forces, the municipal police forces and the firefighters of Maine-et-Loire, as well as that of the inhabitants of this Jean Monnet district, the first victims of the damage to public and private property, says Philippe Chalopin, prefect of this department. The police presence in Cholet has been reinforced since June 28 to restore order and tranquility in the Jean Monnet district.”
This neighbourhood is not necessarily used to this type of incident, we were told at the prefecture, even if it was, like others, quite agitated a year ago during the incidents which followed, throughout France, the death of young Nahel, killed in Nanterre by a shot from a police officer.
It was June 27, 2023. Is there a connection? Impossible to say this Saturday morning.
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