Thousands of rioters in Marseille, Mayor Benoît Payan “demands accountability”

Fnac looted, intrusion into the town hall, Bourse shopping center robbed, clashes of incredible violence between the police and demonstrators, stone-throwing of police vans... In Marseille, the demonstration against the high cost of living very quickly degenerated. The mayor, Benoît Payan (DVG) even denounced a lack of police resources and “demanded accountability” after the intrusion into the town hall and the first looting that the prefect of Bouches-du-Rhône attributed to “7 to 8,000 rioters and looters”.

“I demand accountability, because I am not going to leave things as they are. I want to know what happened. I want to know why, in this city, people were able to break with impunity,” declared Benoît Payan (DVG) during a press briefing shortly after a few dozen people forced the entrance doors to the town hall on the Old Port.

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“I had to call the President of the Republic, the Prime Minister and the Minister of the Interior, to have them on the phone to ask for reinforcements,” he regretted, denouncing the lack, according to him, of prepositioned law enforcement, assuring that “this morning, there was a CRS company for Marseille, Marseille is the second city in France, Marseille is five times Lyon in surface area, it is two and a half times Paris...”

The central municipal police station on the famous Canebière, a few hundred meters away, was also the target of “thugs”, he denounced, claiming to have nevertheless “requested in writing from the police headquarters that it be secured”.

A bust of Marianne on the ground

According to the mayor “they moved quietly, they came in front of the town hall, there was a cordon of CRS who fired a tear gas bomb at the rioters, they are black blocks, they are absolutely not demonstrators, there was a curtain of smoke, then I don't know what happened, there was a movement on the part of the CRS and the door to the town hall was free”, and a few dozen people entered, throwing notably on the ground a bust of Marianne, symbol of the Republic, “an “unbearable” intrusion.

The prefect of Bouches-du-Rhône Jacques Witkovski, for his part, indicated during a press briefing at the end of the afternoon that he had “committed five units this morning” to the town and had “moved (...) an additional unit which arrived around 3 p.m., 3:15 p.m.” refusing to confirm the origin of the decision to call for reinforcements. “We estimate that we are facing today between 7 and 8,000 looters, rioters, there is no other term,” he continued, reporting 29 injured, including two seriously, among the police.

“We don’t maintain order. We are restoring order,” he said, referring to a “situation not yet under control”, with several fires and “at least 30 to 40 businesses looted in the city center”. An attempted looting notably targeted an armory.