More than a dozen police officers were dropped off during overflights of a gendarmerie helicopter on the roof of the empty building, awaiting demolition.
Forty demonstrators,
The operation took place without incident, the occupants having “left the scene”, probably alerted by the overflight of the helicopter.
Three young men and a young girl, including a Belgian national, were also in police custody on Friday, arrested Thursday evening for violence against persons responsible for public order, said the Boulogne-sur-Mer prosecutor’s office.
“Groups of individuals” had then “targeted the police by throwing projectiles”, according to the prefecture.
Only one person was arrested for identity verification, he said, adding that the police would continue their checks “on all the individuals who could be concerned at the level of the city center”.
At the start of the operation, about forty demonstrators, hooded and dressed in black, several of whom probably had just left the building, tried to regroup at the bottom of the building but were dispersed by a police cordon who fired gas tear gas, according to the AFP journalist.
The operation was carried out after a court decision ordering the evacuation, on a request for interim relief from the social landlord Terre d’Opale Habitat to the Boulogne-sur-Mer court, said the prefecture.
About thirty activists (according to the prefecture of various nationalities) had settled since February 3 in this former ten-storey social housing building, the destruction of which is planned in an urban renewal operation.
The police had remained stationed since Tuesday to “prohibit access to this dilapidated and particularly dangerous building”, according to the prefecture which specified that the squatters.