Authorities issued some 1,200 fines and arrested five people during a massive New Year’s Eve party in the French countryside that flouted the country’s coronavirus restrictions.
Local authorities said that more than 2,500 people attended the enormous gathering, which was located in the Brittany region of France, according to CNN. France has a national quarantine that runs from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. Of those cited, 800 were fined for violating COVID-19 restrictions, and 400 were fined for drug offenses.
Officers are “continuing their investigation and checks so that this illegal event is harshly sanctioned,” Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said.
Gendarmes forces were called in after local authorities faced “violent hostility” on Thursday evening as they tried to break up the party. They reported that the revelers threw stones and bottles at the officers and even set a police vehicle ablaze.
While the Gendarmes said there was “no new violence” as of Saturday, investigators are looking into reports that up to 20 vehicles managed to get away by circumventing a barrier leading to the highway.
France has had the fifth-most confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the world, with nearly 2.7 million infections and about 65,000 deaths since the pandemic began, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University. Worldwide there have been about 84.1 million cases and 1.8 million deaths.
