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French police battle protesters at demonstration against mega-reservoir, leaving hundreds injured and one in critical condition

ONE protester is in critical condition and more than 200 were injured as French police battled environmental activists over a reservoir project on Saturday.

The giant agricultural irrigation reservoir planned in Sainte-Soline is aimed at maintaining water supply during ever more frequent droughts, but critics say the model sustains ecologically unsustainable types of industrial farming and chokes off the natural water supply through rivers and streams.

Protest organisers Uprisings of the Earth said the “mega-reservoir” was an example of “grabbing water for the benefit of the minority and the maintenance of an agricultural model as toxic as it is anachronistic.” 

Video footage showed protesters advancing in clouds of tear gas, police vehicles burning and people hurling projectiles at police lines. Europe Ecology-Greens councillor Marine Tondelier accused police of firing on the wounded, a charge they denied.

Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said two people were taken by helicopter to hospital, one of them a policeman, and acknowledged that police had detonated more than 4,000 non-lethal dispersal grenades as they battled the huge demonstration.

Mr Darmanin said the protest had been organised by “more than 1,000 very radicalised and violent people” and that a force of 3,200 police officers would be stationed to protect construction of the reservoir and stop protesters forming a “ZAD” (initials meaning zone to defend, a French term for a protesters’ occupation).

“It is not the forces of disorder and the extreme left that will prevail in the French Republic,” he added in comments echoing those he made about protesters against raising the retirement age two days earlier. Further rallies against the pension attacks took place across France at the weekend.

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