a new tense face-to-face between police and activists on the ZAD of Saïx, in Tarn

Clouds of tear gas, jets of projectiles, burned tires, CRS charges… Tension was high again, Thursday February 15, in the Tarn commune of Saïx (Tarn), at a camp of opponents to the future A69 motorway. A little less than a hundred police officers are mobilized to “an operation to free the public highway”, according to the Tarn prefecture to franceinfo. No precise assessment of this operation was given this evening.

Unusually, the CRS invaded the camp and were still there at 10 p.m., according to opponents contacted by AFP and pushed back towards the outskirts of the ZAD. Powerful searchlights were shined on the plot to illuminate it and the gendarmes apparently burned a wooden structure, activists announced. “They’re going to spend the night here,” said one of them.

The La France insoumise group in the National Assembly called “to a return to calm”in a press release, published Thursday February 15 in the evening. “Ten years after the death of Rémi Fraisse, the Tarn must not experience another tragedy. One person has just been injured in the chest, that’s already too much”, write the deputies. They denounce a “massive use of tear gas and grenades”, “an intentional start of fire with possible danger and poisoning of activists on site”as well as the use of a “flammable product sprayed at the foot of trees occupied by climbers”.