Clashes as French police evacuate airport protest camp nine years after it began

Some 2,500 French police have torn down flaming barricades and fired tear gas at tenacious squatters as they evacuated a protest camp erected nearly a decade ago to block construction of an airport.

One police officer was taken to hospital after being hit in the eye with a flare but was not in a life-threatening condition, according to the national gendarme service.