Seoul Gazette - 'Eats through a straw': French teens wounded in high school protests

The government says 215 students and 715 police officers have been injured since the start of the protests in late September.

Police have used tear gas and other means to try to control what the authorities have described as "urban violence".

But unions, rights groups and many of the children have accused the police of using disproportionate force.

The police have launched 10 internal investigations into allegations of brutality since the protests started, Interior Minister Laurent Nunez said late Monday.

Here are four cases:

- Hand blown off -

A 15-year-old on Monday lost his hand at a protest in the northern town of Lens.

A police union source said he picked up a sting-ball grenade fired by riot officers.

But a witness told La Voix du Nord newspaper that the grenade landed on the teenager.

Local prosecutor Etienne Thieffry late Monday said he was not able to immediately determine "whether this teenager had actually picked up a grenade that exploded in his hand, or whether the grenade had landed on him".

- Eyesight lost -

A 16-year-old has lost the use of his right eye after he was seriously injured in the head on Wednesday during the blockade of Balzac High School in the central town of Tours.

His wounds are "compatible with the impact of a defensive bullet of the blast ball type", local prosecutor Catherine Sorita-Minard said.

The family has filed a legal complaint for "violence by a person with public authority", her office said.

The family of the boy, named Mael, has said in a statement that he had "absolutely no involvement, whether directly or indirectly, in any activist or political activity whatsoever".

"He is simply a teenager who found himself caught up in the events," they said.

- Teeth obliterated -

On Monday last week, in Saint-Ouen-L'Aumone, northwest of Paris, a 14-year-old named as Eden lost most of his teeth when a police officer appeared to fire a grenade at him at very close range.

"His jaw is sealed shut, he can no longer speak and he eats through a straw," his mother told media on Monday, adding all his upper teeth were broken and "his lower teeth torn out".

In widely relayed video footage, three helmeted riot police officers are seen facing the high school student. One of them lands a first blow to the teenager, who responds with a kick, before a grenade launcher shot to the face sends him crashing to the ground.

Lawyer Elsa Marcel said there was no way the officer ignored that "his weapon could fatally strike a child when shot at point-blank range" at "a distance of 1.50 metres" (five feet).

The family was on Monday preparing to file a legal complaint for "attempted intentional homicide".

- Injured eye -

In the capital's northwestern suburb of Argenteuil, near two high schools, a blast ball injured a 16-year-old in the eye on Thursday.

The local prosecutor's office said police were responding to two men around 20 metres away who had fired fireworks in their direction.

Two officers with defensive ball launchers used them, it said, adding that "the description of the young man taken into care by the emergency services appeared to correspond to that of one of the two individuals who had been involved".

Paul Vannier, a lawmaker from the hard-left France Unbowed party that has expressed support for the protests, said the teen was still in hospital.

"At this point the doctors are unable to say whether he will lose the use of his eye or not," he said.

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W.Nam--SG