Montpellier saw a weekend of chaos as groups of up to 10 violent migrant youths launched a series of attacks on lone pedestrians.
Muggings and assaults in broad daylight have become a regular occurrence in recent weeks, as an influx of ‘unaccompanied minors’ from Morocco and Algeria have moved into Montpellier, in southern France.
Early on Friday morning, two youths approached a woman as she was leaving a nightclub with friends. She was struck by a male migrant while his female accomplice snatched her mobile phone and debit card.
On Sunday morning near the Place de l’Observatoire, 10 migrant youths surrounded a woman, beat her, and ran away with her handbag. When the victim’s friend tried to intervene, she too was physically attacked.
When police arrested four of the 10 North African culprits, two other people approached to say that they too had been robbed and assaulted by the youths.
The weekend saw a total of eight incidents in which unaccompanied minors, who are housed by local government and given vouchers to buy their own food, mugged pedestrians in Montpellier.
Between 20 and 21 March, four women fell victim to the young thieves, including a 92-year-old grandmother who was robbed of her purse and debit card.
While police have grown increasingly concerned about the attacks, the Montpellier Metropolitan notes that Hérault’s municipal department for public security “refuses to explain” the situation.
On Friday, reporting on a case in which a 17-year-old unaccompanied minor snatched the gold necklace from an octogenarian’s neck as the lady was leaving her house, the newspaper informed readers that “police in the city have seen a steep increase in robbery with violence, most often committed by migrant youths”.
Last month, Breitbart London reported on how the city of Uppsala in Sweden has been facing similar problems, with unaccompanied minors mugging pensioners in the street for drugs money.