A police operation was carried out “successfully” this Friday, May 31, in the last district of the city of Nouméa which had not yet come under the control of the police, announced Gérald Darmanin, two weeks and half after the start of the riots in New Caledonia. “A major police operation has just taken place, successfully, in the Rivière-Salée district, the last one in Nouméa which was not under control,” wrote the Minister of the Interior in a message on.
This operation mobilized 400 members of the police, the High Commission of the Republic in New Caledonia told the press. Members of the elite police units (RAID) and gendarmerie (GIGN) took part, according to Gérald Darmanin, who welcomed “the arrest of 12 individuals and the removal of 26 roadblocks”.
The Rivière-Salée district, in the north of the commune of Nouméa, was blocked by “numerous roadblocks, manned by dangerous individuals, and several snipers had been spotted”, a police source told AFP, referring to a “complex security”.
Neighborhoods of the city still blocked
However, other neighborhoods remain blocked in the Nouméa conurbation, in the communes of Mont-Dore, Païta and Dumbéa, the president of the South province, Sonia Backès, main representative of the loyalist camp, told the press. “The State has the means to act, we saw it in Rivière-Salée […]. The State must deploy everywhere to liberate the neighborhoods,” she insisted.
According to an AFP journalist on site, another roadblock was being dismantled by the gendarmes this Friday in La Tamoa, not far from La Tontouta international airport, which remains closed to commercial flights until Monday morning. .
The vote for a constitutional reform expanding the electorate, accused by the separatists of marginalizing the indigenous Kanak population, triggered the most serious political crisis in New Caledonia since the 1980s, accompanied by violence, looting, damage and road blockades.