At least 12 young women between the ages of 14 and 20 were hospitalized in France following countrywide attacks using syringes this past weekend. French police have detained at least a dozen suspects.
On Saturday, crowds across France gathered to celebrate Fête de la Musique, or World Music Day, an annual celebration in which citizens play music and attend free concerts in their neighborhoods and public spaces. The French Interior Ministry reports that 145 attendees across multiple cities reported being pricked by needles. On Instagram, François Grosdidier, the mayor of Metz in the northeast of France, wrote that “about fifteen young girls” were attacked in the city. Meanwhile, Paris police reported 13 needle attacks in the capital, including that of a 15-year-old girl and an 18-year-old man who felt unwell afterwards. Thirteen women in the city of Tours told local fire services they had been pricked, according to the Guardian, with several more young women reporting needle stabbings in the cities of Évreux and Rouen in Normandy.
Officials in France have not yet confirmed the contents of the needles or whether they had been spiked with date-rape drugs like GHB and Rohypnol. In a statement, the country’s Interior Ministry said “some victims” have been taken to the hospital for toxicological tests. Authorities are still investigating the origins of the attacks. Mayor Grosdidier wrote on Instagram that “a call for syringe assaults has been launched during the Music Festivals in major cities” on social networks. The Guardian reports that the feminist influencer Abrège Soeur put out an online warning prior to the festival that social-media posts calling for women to be targeted by the syringes had been made online, though the outlet notes that it’s unclear “where such posts would have been made or by whom.”