French protests: Female farmer killed as car hits French protesters
A woman in her thirties, identified as a cattle breeder named Alexandra Sonac, lost her life, while her husband and teenage daughter sustained severe injuries in a car collision with a roadblock during a nationwide protest by French farmers.
The incident occurred in the south-west, a crucial agricultural region in France, where farmers had been blocking key roads for several days.
Preliminary investigations by the local prosecutor suggested that the collision near Toulouse was not intentional. Agriculture Minister Marc Fesneau characterized the event as a “tragedy for all of us.”
The accident occurred as farmers, protesting new environmental regulations and escalating energy expenses, expanded their roadblocks nationwide following a meeting with Prime Minister Gabriel Attal.
According to public prosecutors, the car hit bales of straw and struck three individuals on a section of the N20 national route in Pamiers, located 70km (43 miles) south of Toulouse, in the early hours of Tuesday.
Alexandra Sonac, the deceased farmer, was a resident of the nearby village of Saint-Felix-de-Tournegat. Initially, there were conflicting reports about the farmer’s 14-year-old daughter, but it was clarified later that she remained in critical condition, while the farmer’s husband was receiving intensive care.
All three occupants of the car, traveling from Toulouse to Andorra, a two-hour drive to the south, were apprehended by authorities.
An investigation has been opened into aggravated manslaughter although local prosecutor Olivier Mouysset said the incident did not appear to be deliberate.
The young farmer who died was a member of the main FNSEA farmers’ union, whose president Arnaud Rousseau said that “in this particular moment that [French] agriculture is dealing with, this kind of tragedy is difficult to cope with”.
“I’d like to tell the people on the ground first of all that they have the full support of French farmers.”
As the farmers’ protests spread across France, the head of the Jeunes Agriculteurs (Young Farmers) union, Arnaud Gaillot, said he had never seen such widespread determination. “If necessary we’ll blockade Paris… some [of our members] have nothing else to lose, their survival is at stake,” he told RTL radio.
Tractors and lorries blocked the A7 motorway in south-east France, with the slogan “we’re dying to feed you” daubed in red on one of the vehicles.
The most recent protests started in the south-west last week. Although it is one of the most important agricultural regions in the country, the FNSEA says farmers in this part of France have the lowest incomes within the profession.
They are already being nicknamed “gilets verts”, or green jackets – a reference to the broader gilets jaunes civil protests that swept across France over rising fuel prices.
More than 400 tractors last week blocked the center of Toulouse, home to around 800,000 people; and over the past few days, several key motorways in the southwest have been cut off entirely by farmers who have installed sleeping quarters in the middle of the highways.
Aware of how politically sensitive the situation is, the French interior minister said on Monday he would not order police to break up the blockades.
Prime Minister Gabriel Attal responded to news of the accident on Tuesday by paying tribute to the family and friends of those involved in the accident. The nation was “overwhelmed and united” and all of France’s farmers were in mourning, he said on social media.
