French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin poses in his office in Paris. File photo
| Photo Credit: AFP

France could see civil unrest and violence that is related to the elections, Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said on Monday, June 24, 2024, as campaigning enters its last week before the first round of voting.

Also read: France’s far right National Rally still leading ahead of election, poll shows

“It’s possible that there will be extremely strong tensions,” Mr. Darmanin told RTL radio, adding that authorities were preparing for a “highly inflammable” situation, with the vote taking place less than a month before the Paris 2024 Olympics.

“The people says ‘no’ to the Parisians, to the elites with their diplomas”, Mr. Darmanin told RTL radio.

President Emmanuel Macron, who shocked the nation with a decision to dissolve the National Assembly earlier this month, is not on the ballot, but for many voters, the election is perceived as a referendum on the fate of a President once seen as a able to overcome political divisions, but whose approval ratings collapsed after several political crises.

“I trust you,” Mr. Macron told voters in a ‘letter to the French’ published on Sunday, June 23, in which he sought to cast his camp, lagging in the polls behind the far right and a newly formed leftwing alliance, as the last hope for stability, adding: “I’m not blind: I’m aware of the democratic malaise.”

Mr. Macron also reiterated that he would stay in office until his term ends in 2027 regardless of the outcome of the election.

A man walks past a fire as prison staff block the entrance of the Detention Center after gunmen freed a drug dealer, killing two prison guards and severely wounding three others, in Val De Reuil, France, May 15, 2024.
| Photo Credit: REUTERS

A massive manhunt was underway in France on May 15 for an armed gang that ambushed a prison convoy, killing two prison officers, seriously injuring three others and springing the inmate they were escorting.

French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said “unprecedented” efforts were being deployed. Hundreds of officers were mobilized in the search for the escaped convict, Mohamed Amra, and the assailants who laid in wait for the prison van transporting him, ramming a car into it before opening fire on May 15.

The violence of the attack shocked France. Prison workers held moments of silence May 15 outside prisons in Paris and elsewhere to commemorate the officers who were killed.

Darmanin, speaking May 15 on RTL radio, expressed hope that Amra could be caught “in the coming days.” Without giving full details about the extent of the manhunt, he said 450 officers had been deployed in the region of the attack in Normandy in northern France to search for the assailants and clues about their whereabouts.

“The means employed are considerable,” he said. “We are progressing a lot.”

The attack appeared to have been carefully prepared. The convoy was transporting Amra back to jail in the Normandy town of Évreux after a hearing with an investigator in Rouen when it was ambushed on the A154 freeway.

The prison van and another prison escort vehicle had just gone through a toll booth on the freeway when the van was rammed head-on by a car. The Paris prosecutor’s office said the car had been stolen and had gone through the toll booth a few minutes ahead of the prison convoy and then waited there.

Another car followed behind the convoy, seemingly boxing it in. Assailants sprang from the cars and opened fire, spraying the prison vehicles, the prosecutor’s office said.

The assailants and Amra then fled.

One of the officers killed was a 52-year-old captain in the prison service, where he had worked for nearly 30 years, and a father of two, prosecutor Laure Beccuau said. The other officer killed, aged 34, was a married father-to-be, she said.

Amra, 30, has a long criminal record, with at least 13 convictions for robbery and other crimes, the first when he was just 15, she said.