The French government will reinforce its police presence in the overseas territory of Mayotte after recent gang violence on the island, the Interior Ministry said.
The situation is deteriorating in Mayotte. For five days, violent clashes have broken out between rival gangs in Majicavo and Koungou, in the north of the island. At the instigation of Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin and Overseas Minister Yaël Braun-Pivet, the government announced in a press release the deployment “on site and as a matter of urgency of an additional mobile gendarme squadron”, at the request of the Prefect of Mayotte.
On Sunday 5 June, two young men aged 19 and 26 were attacked by an individual in Koungou. The younger man succumbed to his injuries at the Mayotte Hospital the next day.
Since the announcement of his death, the inhabitants of Koungou have set up roadblocks preventing traffic on the national road leading to Mamoudzou, the capital. Motorists as well as law enforcement officers were pelted with stones, according to Mayotte la 1ère.
The intervention of the gendarmerie and police forces has enabled the liberation of “many roads regularly blocked by burning barricades”, the statement said. Since the beginning of the operations, four departmental gendarmes and three mobile gendarmes have been injured by projectiles and blows.
