The mayor of Miribel-Les-Echelles suffered wounds and burns to his face and hands after trying to stop people firing fireworks in the village square.

The mayor of Miribel-Les-Echelles, in Isère, was assaulted on Monday, July 27, while trying to calm down individuals firing fireworks in the village square, AFP reported from corroborating sources.

William Dufour, 51, suffered “wounds to the face and on one hand and a burn on the other hand,” firefighters told AFP. They took the “slightly injured” man to the hospital on Monday evening. The mayor was given a seven-day temporary work stoppage. William Dufour was attending a meeting with two local councillors when he heard the sounds of scooters and then fireworks in the village square, AFP learned from public prosecutor Eric Vaillant.

The six assailants of the mayor don’t live in the town

The mayor, after having proclaimed his position, then asked the teenagers to “stop their disturbances”. They did not comply: one of them threatened William Dufour with fireworks, who tried to stop him but was burned, while another hit him in the face, according to information from the Grenoble public prosecutor’s office.

According to the same source, it is a group of six young people, who came with three scooters and who do not live in the small commune of some 1700 inhabitants, in the Chartreuse Regional Nature Park.

An inquiry has been opened, conducted by the Meylan search brigade and the gendarmes of Saint Laurent du Pont brigade. “What struck me is that these young people had some hatred for me, even though we don’t know each other,” the mayor told the regional daily Le Dauphiné Libéré. But the mayor who is serving his first term in office assured that he “does not feel discouraged by this incident”.

Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin denounced “the unacceptable violence committed against the mayor of Miribel-les-Échelles. I give him my full support. To attack a mayor is to attack the Republic,” he reacted on Twitter.