France’s night in flames as thugs revolt torching 1,000 cars and ‘lynching’ police
THUGS ran amok up and down France torching more than 1,000 cars and attacking police in a night of chaos on the streets.
By ROMINA MCGUINNESS
Express.co.uk
Tue, Jan 2, 2018
New Year celebrations were marred by 510 people arrested and 1,031 cars being set alight, according to official numbers from the interior ministry.
The numbers were up from 456 arrests and 935 cars torched last year.
And eight police officers and three anti-terrorist Sentinel soldiers had been injured on Sunday night.
In one brutal attack, in Paris, a female police officer and her colleague were beaten to a pulp by a group of men as she tried to break up a brawl in Champigny-Sur-Marne, in the south-east of the city.
The woman has been signed off work for a week, while her colleague, who suffered a broken nose in the attack, will not return to work for 10 days.
Two revellers present at the scene have since been arrested, although it is still “too soon” to know whether they played a key role in the assault, a police source close to the case told the French daily Le Monde.
The attack sparked outrage across France after footage of the incident was posted online by one of the alleged attackers.
French president Emmanuel Macron on Monday denounced the “cowardly” act, before promising to “find and punish” the culprits.
He tweeted: “Those guilty of the cowardly and criminal lynching of police doing their duty on the night of December 31 will be found and punished. The law will prevail. Honour to the police and full support to all the agents attacked in such a shameful fashion.”
Interior minister Gérard Collomb took to Twitter to denounce the “odious act”, adding “an attack on the country’s police force was an attack on the French Republic”.
He told Europe 1 radio this morning: “Such savage acts of violence have no place in our society.”
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