On Thursday 1 October 2026 at around 8 a.m., near the Poncelet lycée in Saint-Avold (Moselle), a police officer is hit by a firework mortar shot during the high-school mobilisation. Radio Mélodie describes 150 young people gathered in front of the town’s schools, a situation that became “very quickly tense” (translated), then 350 protesters in the streets later in the morning; about fifty police officers, supported by the municipal police and the PSIG, are on the scene.
The sources differ slightly on the injury. Actu17, quoting Lorraine Actu, writes that the officer had just got out of his vehicle, that he was reportedly hit on the shoulder by the projectile and that the shock reportedly “threw him to the ground” (translated); his colleagues took charge of him before the firefighters, then he was taken to hospital. ICI Lorraine writes, “according to our information” (translated), that a police officer was injured “by the blast of a mortar shot” (translated). moselle.tv and Radio Mélodie confirm that a police officer is injured by a mortar shot. All the sources speak of a mortar shot; none describes a medical finding, an incapacity for work or a statement from the public prosecutor’s office or the prefecture on this injury. The same day, ICI reports another police officer hit in the hand in Metz, with no described link to this scene.
Follow-up
According to Radio Mélodie, a young person is arrested immediately afterwards; Actu17 (citing Lorraine Actu) writes that the presumed shooter is among two people arrested during the day, two others having been arrested the day before. None of these sources indicates a court decision. The town hall, for its part, announces complaints for deliberately concealing the face and for damage to street furniture, with no described link to the police officer’s injury (Actu17, moselle.tv).