145 People jabbed with needles at French Music Festival

In France, 145 people said they were injected with syringes at the annual street music festival Fête de la Musique. About it writes Le Parisien.

According to the publication, police received 145 complaints about injections from all over France, of which more than 20 were in the Ile-de-France metropolitan region, including 13 in Paris.

Among the victims – most of them women – are minors. At least three, a 15-year-old girl, an 18-year-old teenager, and a woman, reported feeling unwell after the injections.

“Some of the victims were taken to hospitals for toxicology tests,” the interior ministry said. Authorities did not specify whether the victims had been injected with any substances.

Investigations were launched after the incident. A total of 12 suspects were detained in France. Among them were four men from the town of Angoulême in western France; they are suspected of attacking about 50 victims.

In total, more than 300 people were detained during the festival, and 13 police officers were injured.

The Paris prosecutor’s office noted that “sexual assaults, stabbings, and throwing objects at police officers” were a recurring occurrence during this festival.

Before the festival, social media began to call for injections for women, and downloads of apps to report harassment and violence to victims increased, Le Parisien writes.

In 2024, five teenage girls were victims of injections while in the crowd at the Fête de la Musique festival in Saint-Maur-de-Fosse in southeastern France.

A similar case was also recorded during a food truck festival in September 2022.