SULAIMANI (ESTA) — About 40 unidentified people armed with metal bars and using fireworks as projectiles staged an hour-long attack against a police station in the Paris suburbs on Saturday night, police said.
“Violent attack last night on the police station of Champigny with mortar shots and various projectiles. No police officer was injured,” the Paris police headquarters said on Twitter on Sunday, according to Reuters.
The station’s entrance and several police vehicles were damaged during the raid launched just before midnight in Champigny-sur-Marne, around 12km east of the capital, AFP reported.
The police posted a video showing a barrage of fireworks going off in the direction of the police station. The assailants tried to force entry into the station, failed to do so.
The city’s mayor, Laurent Jeanne, told BFM television the police might have been targeted in retaliation for an “incident” involving a scooter driver who was stopped by officers a few days ago, without providing details.
Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin tweeted that “these little dealers don’t scare anyone, and will not discourage our anti-drug work”, though police officials did not identify the attackers, and no arrests were made.
The assault came after two officers were attacked and shot with their own guns in a Paris suburb last Wednesday, prompting renewed calls for stepped-up efforts to tackle crime and insecurity.
A spate of criminal incidents across France since the end of the COVID-19 lockdown in mid-May has put President Emmanuel Macron’s government on heightened alert for increases in crime amid the economic fallout from the pandemic.
