Clashes erupts as police clear abandoned airport site in western France

PARIS - French police clashed with ecologists and anarchists on early Monday morning as they were clearing an abandoned airport site in Notre-Dame-des-Landes (NDDL), western France, according to local report.

Protesters set fire to barricades and threw projectiles at police that fired teargas and stun grenades. One police officer suffered an eye injury and a protester was arrested following the standoff, BFMTV news channel reported.

A group of farmers, ecologists and anarchists who call themselves ZADists, have been squatted in the site where the government planned to build a new airport before it decided to drop the project on January.

At a dawn swoop, 2,500 police have deployed in Notre-Dame-des-Landes to evict the squatters, Interior Minister Gerard Collomb tweeted.

On January, French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe announced the government's decision to drop a controversial project to build an international airport at NDDL, ending five decades of protests.

Following the government's decision, protesters have been ordered to leave the site after they succeeded in getting the airport project abandoned.

"We said that we would not build Notre-Dame-des-Landes airport. But, we also want that life, in this area, returns to normal,"Collomb told local broadcaster Europe1.

"Illegal constructions must be brought down for things to come back to normal in Notre-Dame-des-Landes," he added.

The NDDL project, financed by the state and private investors, would have aimed to build a second airport in Nantes by taking over hundreds of hectares of farmland in order to boost economic prospects in the region.

However, opponents said the project would hardly damage environment.