This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

French police have used teargas in an attempt to clear anti-capitalist squatters from the site of an abandoned airport project.

About 2,500 riot police made a pre-dawn raid in Notre-Dame-des-Landes to evict about 250 activists.

The squatters have occupied the site for 10 years to prevent the airport from being built, but refused to leave after the plans were dropped earlier this year, saying they sought to construct an alternative way of life.



The government had warned they would be evicted and carried out this threat on Monday morning.

The protesters threw petrol bombs and set fire to barricades made of tyres and wooden pallets to obstruct the police’s advance.



An eclectic group of anti-capitalists, eco-warriors and squatters, known as Zadists, joined a handful of farmers on the site in 2008.



Over the past 50 years, successive governments have waded into the debate over the controversial plan to build an airport hub serving western France. The half century had been marked by consultations, arguments and indecision until Emmanuel Macron announced in January that the €580m (£505m) project would be abandoned once and for all.

An attempt in 2012 failed to dislodge settlers of what is called the ZAD – zone d’aménagement différée (zone for future development) officially and zone à défendre (zone to defend) to protesters.

The eviction, named Opération César, led to clashes between the squatters and the police, and the government backed down following public outrage at the violent scenes.

Many of the squatters had abandoned their tents and caravans and built permanent homes, shacks and cabins, or had occupied abandoned farms, making them habitable and planting the land around.

There was a boulangerie, a brewery, a pirate radio station, an online newspaper and a weekly vegetable market.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Officers in riot gear move towards the anti-capitalist activists. Photograph: Loic Venance/AFP/Getty Images

At the end of last year, Zadists told the Guardian they were seeking an alternative, simpler and more utopian way of life.

“The squatters and the farmers here are building something extraordinary, something that goes back to the simple life of our grandparents,” one said. “We are able to produce what we need, and we don’t need a lot.”

At 3.22am, Zadist organisers, prepared for eviction, diffused an alert that the police were on their way, and eight minutes later, they set a barricade alight to prevent officers from entering the site. Protesters claimed 70 police buses had surrounded the 1,650-hectare (4,080 acre) site.

Gérard Collomb, the French interior minister, said police would remain “for as long as necessary” to ensure the site was not reoccupied.

End of la ZAD? France’s ‘utopian’ anti-airport community faces bitter last stand Read more

He said those evicted would be offered alternative accommodation. “Nobody will be left on the street,” Collomb said.

In December, the squatters were bullish, saying they would not give up on their dream. “The state institutions have no power here. We have organised our lives without them – that’s what they don’t like. Even if they expel us, we’ll come back … After a month, there will be thousands of us,” one warned.

By midday on Monday, the police prefecture said 10 out of an estimated 97 squats at the site had been dismantled and one person had been arrested for throwing a firebomb. A gendarme was injured in the eye and taken to hospital, but released after treatment.

The eviction operation is expected to last several days.