French prosecutor condemns police brutality as protester fights for his life

PARIS - A French prosecutor has denounced police brutality while a protester who suffered severe head trauma amid clashes with law enforcement in a southwestern village fights for his life.

PARIS - A French prosecutor has denounced police brutality while a protester who suffered severe head trauma amid clashes with law enforcement in a southwestern village fights for his life.

The 30-year-old man suffered life-threatening head trauma on Saturday after police attacked protesters in the southwestern village of Sainte-Soline with tear gas canisters, water cannons and rubber bullets, prosecutor Julien Wattebled said on Sunday.

Two other protesters were also hospitalized after being injured by excessive use of force by police against protesters who were trying to stop the construction of huge water tanks to irrigate crops. They included a 19-year-old woman with a facial injury and a 27-year-old man with a broken foot.

Opponents of the project say the "megabases" will distort access to water in drought conditions. They believe such pools are unfairly reserved for large export-oriented grain farms, depriving the community of access to this vital resource.

A special investigation has been launched to determine the exact nature of the protesters' injuries and the circumstances that led to them, Wattebled said.

Twenty-nine police officers also sustained injuries, two of whom were hospitalized, prosecutors said.

French authorities deployed around 3,000 police officers to protect the construction site. They said 6,000 protesters took part in the demonstration, while organizers said there were up to 30,000 people.

Paris blames protesters for the surge in violence, with Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne claiming she has "seen images of people who have no other aim than to hurt the police".

The protest in the French village followed days of nationwide unrest over French President Emmanuel Macron's government's highly controversial plan to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64.

Public outrage that Macron pushed through the law without a parliamentary vote has sparked daily clashes between protesters and police in French cities for the past week.

Apart from the recent protests, hundreds of thousands of French people have been demonstrating peacefully against the pension reform bill since January.

France's security forces drew criticism this week for their heavy-handed tactics in handling the protests. On Friday, the Council of Europe warned that sporadic violence during protests "cannot justify the excessive use of force".