About 100 masked men armed with firecrackers and other objects attacked vehicles  in central France, during clashes overnight with law enforcement, resulting in nine police officers being injured.

According to local authorities, the clashes began at 1 a.m. Friday night into Saturday. About a hundred illegal immigrants blocked the highway and attacked passing cars, “mostly with firecrackers.”

“There were 100-150 people in masks, armed with Molotov cocktails bombs, firecrackers, rocks, iron bars, baseball bats,” said Laurent Nadeau, secretary of the local Alliance police union.

The officers responded with plastic bullets and targeted grenades, and the clashes ended around 4 a.m.

“There were families in some cars, there were young children inside,” said the prosecutor’s office. “None of the drivers were injured, but many were terrified,” it added.

“This is a urban guerrilla war,” said Limoges Mayor Emile Roger Loberti. “For the past four or five years this has been happening in this district. For me, it’s dangerous,” he added, describing a “very poor neighborhood, with young immigrants” that has become a “zone of lawlessness.”

Prosecutor Emily Abradès said the district is “known” to authorities for the drug trafficking that takes place there but “no evidence links last night’s events to a recent trafficking-related investigation.”

On 14 July, on the day of France’s national holiday, there were again riots in the same zone.

The Interior Ministry announced that a special police force would be deployed in the city to maintain order.