Amazing what is happening in Europe, how long it has lasted and how little we have heard about it here in the US…
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- Marseilles, Paris’s Charles de Gaulle and Orly airports affected
- Passengers forced to carry their own luggage off planes
- 3,000 of the country’s 12,000 petrol stations have run dry
- Disputes costing country £100million a day
Armed with pump-action shotguns, sidearms and stun grenades the officers look like they belong in a war zone.
In fact they are elite French policemen who were deployed to the historic centre of Lyon yesterday to deal with rioting students.
President Nicolas Sarkozy took the extreme measure in the face of growing protests against an unpopular law aimed at increasing the retirement age from 60 to 62.
Taking aim: Riot police fired flashball guns at student demonstrators in Lyon yesterday. Two thousand had gone on the rampage, burning cars and destroying shop windows
Nicknamed ‘Sarko’s Stormtroopers’, the GIPN (National Police Intervention Group) faced down 2,000 youngsters in Place Bellecour where cars had been set on fire and shop windows smashed.
