French police fire tear gas at protesters to clear port blockade

French police have removed demonstrators from the western port of La Rochelle with tear gas, as environmentalists and small farmers mobilised against massive irrigation reservoirs under construction.

Around 200 people had entered the La Pallice port terminal on Saturday, including farmers with old tractors, setting up a street party with music and drinks outside a major grain trader's facility.

More than a dozen police vans and an armoured vehicle pushed them out during the morning in a cloud of tear gas, while other police vehicles blocked off access to the port.

The protest in the city on France's Atlantic coast was 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 Bassines Non Merci (Reservoirs, No Thanks) movement.

Activists charge that 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, with backers saying that without them farms risk vanishing as they suffer th rough repeated droughts.

Last year, mass clashes between thousands of demonstrators and police in Sainte-Soline, around 90 kilometres (56 miles) inland from La Rochelle, left two protesters in a coma and injured 30 officers.

___

Source: TRT World