LA ROCHELLE, France: Protesters clashed with police in France’s western port of La Rochelle Saturday, as conservationists and small farmers mobilized against massive irrigation reservoirs under construction.
Local government officials had banned demonstrations in the city, which is a popular tourist site in summer.
A 2,000-strong march, one of two through the city, was charged by police at around 1:30 p.m. (1130 GMT).
Running battles erupted around barricades and burning rubbish bins as some protesters threw projectiles and police fired tear gas grenades.
“We were in the demo, they started blocking ahead and behind,” said Lilia, a 25-year-old who declined to give her full name. “They isolated us off to one side to charge everyone else.”
Police said around 500 participants in the march were so-called “black bloc” far-left radicals.
Prosecutors in La Rochelle said four members of the police and five demonstrators received medical care for minor injuries.
Several shops were damaged or looted, along with bus shelters and advertising hoardings. A building site was ransacked for cinder blocks and wood to construct barricades.
Police arrested seven people, mostly for trespassing.
The second, more peaceful march, made up of around 3,000 people family groups, moved from the city center toward the commercial port. Many wore costume disguises.
Some used kayaks or inflatable boats to approach the La Pallice agricultural export terminal, singled out by organizers as the target for the demonstrations.
The two marches joined up mid-afternoon along the waterfront before turning back and dispersing calmly.
Police had used tear gas earlier Saturday to clear around 200 people who entered the terminal at dawn, including farmers with old tractors.
That confrontation broke up mostly peacefully.
The protests in the city on France’s Atlantic coast were intended to show that new “reservoirs aren’t being built to grow food locally, but to feed international markets,” said Julien Le Guet, a spokesman for the “Reservoirs, No Thanks” movement.
Activists say the reservoirs, set to be filled from aquifers in winter to provide summer irrigation, benefit only large farmers at the expense of smaller operations and the environment.
Several dozen are under construction in western France, their supporters arguing that without them farms risk vanishing as they suffer through repeated droughts.
Last year, clashes between thousands of demonstrators and police in Sainte-Soline, around 90 kilometers (56 miles) inland from La Rochelle, left two protesters in a coma and injured 30 officers.
Further scuffles broke out Saturday as demonstrators returned to La Rochelle’s center from the agricultural port, some launching fireworks at the police, who responded with tear gas and water cannons.
“Cease fire, there are children in the march,” Le Guet shouted. “Don’t make the same mistake as at Sainte-Soline.”
Fears of clashes had been high all week. More than 3,000 police deployed around a “Water Village” protest camp in Melle, a few kilometers from Sainte-Soline, as authorities warned of a risk of “great violence.”
The prefecture banned the demonstrations in popular summer tourist destination La Rochelle, but organizers went ahead with them.
On Saturday, “our aim wasn’t to clash with law enforcement, it’s often law enforcement who aim to clash with us,” said Juliette Riviere, an SLT member.
Prosecutors said that six people had been taken into custody by mid-afternoon Saturday.
French police clash with water demonstrators after port blockade
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French police clash with water demonstrators after port blockade
- Running battles erupted around barricades and burning rubbish bins as some protesters threw projectiles and police fired tear gas grenades
Trump warns Maduro against playing ‘tough’ as US escalates pressure campaign on Venezuela
- Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro on Monday fired back at Donald Trump, who has ordered US naval forces to blockade the South American country's oil wealth, saying the US president would be "better off" focusing on domestic issues rather than threatenin
- The Defense Department, under Trump’s orders, continues its campaign of attacks on smaller vessels in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific Ocean that it alleges are carrying drugs to the United States and beyond
WEST PALM BEACH, Florida: President Donald Trump on Monday delivered a new warning to Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro as the US Coast Guard steps up efforts to interdict oil tankers in the Caribbean Sea as part of the Republican administration’s escalating pressure campaign on the government in Caracas.
Trump was surrounded by his top national security aides, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, as he suggested that he remains ready to further escalate his four-month pressure campaign on the Maduro government, which began with the stated purpose of stemming the flow of illegal drugs from the South American nation but has developed into something more amorphous.
“If he wants to do something, if he plays tough, it’ll be the last time he’ll ever be able to play tough,” Trump said of Maduro as he took a break from his Florida holiday vacation to announce plans for the Navy to build a new, large warship.
Trump levied his latest threat as the US Coast Guard on Monday continued for a second day to chase a sanctioned oil tanker that the Trump administration describes as part of a “dark fleet” Venezuela is using to evade US sanctions. The tanker, according to the White House, is flying under a false flag and is under a US judicial seizure order.
“It’s moving along and we’ll end up getting it,” Trump said.
It is the third tanker pursued by the Coast Guard, which on Saturday seized a Panama-flagged vessel called Centuries that US officials said was part of the Venezuelan shadow fleet.
The Coast Guard, with assistance from the Navy, seized a sanctioned tanker called Skipper on Dec. 10, also part of the shadow fleet of tankers that the US says operates on the fringes of the law to move sanctioned cargo. That ship was registered in Panama.
Trump, after that first seizure, said the US would carry out a “blockade” of Venezuela. Trump has repeatedly said that Maduro’s days in power are numbered.
Last week, Trump demanded that Venezuela return assets that it seized from US oil companies years ago, justifying anew his announcement of a blockade against sanctioned oil tankers traveling to or from the South American country.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, whose agency oversees the Coast Guard, said in a Monday appearance on “Fox & Friends” that the targeting of tankers is intended to send “a message around the world that the illegal activity that Maduro is participating in cannot stand, he needs to be gone, and that we will stand up for our people.”
Russian diplomats evacuate families from Caracas
Meanwhile, Russia’s Foreign Ministry started evacuating the families of diplomats from Venezuela, according to a European intelligence official speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive information.
The official told The Associated Press the evacuations include women and children and began on Friday, adding that Russian Foreign Ministry officials are assessing the situation in Venezuela in “very grim tones.” The ministry said in an X posting that it was not evacuating the embassy but did not address queries about whether it was evacuating the families of diplomats.
Venezuela’s Foreign Minister Yván Gil on Monday said he spoke by phone with his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, who he said expressed Russia’s support for Venezuela against Trump’s declared blockade of sanctioned oil tankers.
“We reviewed the aggressions and flagrant violations of international law that have been committed in the Caribbean: attacks against vessels and extrajudicial executions, and the unlawful acts of piracy carried out by the United States government,” Gil said in a statement.
The scene on a Venezuelan beach near a refinery
While US forces targeted the vessels in international waters over the weekend, a tanker that’s considered part of the shadow fleet was spotted moving between Venezuelan refineries, including one about three hours west of the capital, Caracas.
The tanker remained at the refinery in El Palito through Sunday, when families went to the town’s beach to relax with children now on break from school.
Music played on loudspeakers as people swam and surfed with the tanker in the background. Families and groups of teenagers enjoyed themselves, but Manuel Salazar, who has parked cars at the beach for more than three decades, noticed differences from years past, when the country’s oil-dependent economy was in better shape and the energy industry produced at least double the current 1 million barrels per day.
“Up to nine or 10 tankers would wait out there in the bay. One would leave, another would come in,” Salazar, 68, said. “Now, look, one.”
The tanker in El Palito has been identified by Transparencia Venezuela, an independent watchdog promoting government accountability, to be part of the shadow fleet.
Area residents on Sunday recalled when tankers would sound their horns at midnight New Year’s Eve, while some would even send up fireworks to celebrate the holiday.
“Before, during vacations, they’d have barbecues; now all you see is bread with bologna,” Salazar said of Venezuelan families spending the holiday at the beach next to the refinery. “Things are expensive. Food prices keep going up and up every day.”
Venezuela’s ruling party-controlled National Assembly on Monday gave initial approval to a measure that would criminalize a broad range of activities that could be linked to the seizure of oil tankers.
Lawmaker Giuseppe Alessandrello, who introduced the bill, said people could be fined and imprisoned for up to 20 years for promoting, requesting, supporting, financing or participating in “acts of piracy, blockades or other international illegal acts against” commercial entities operating with the South American country.
The Defense Department, under Trump’s orders, continues its campaign of attacks on smaller vessels in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific Ocean that it alleges are carrying drugs to the United States and beyond.
At least 104 people have been killed in 28 known strikes since early September. The strikes have faced scrutiny from US lawmakers and human rights activists, who say the administration has offered scant evidence that its targets are indeed drug smugglers and that the fatal strikes amount to extrajudicial killings.
