"We're in a situation where we're trying to make contact with these people, who call themselves 'the squirrels', and we're trying to get them to come down themselves," explains Colonel Stephane Dallongeville, head of operations for the Haute-Garonne group, on the fourth day of a gendarmerie operation in the last bastion of opposition to the A69 motorway. For several months now, the construction of this 53-kilometre motorway, which will link Toulouse and Castres, south-western France, from the end of 2025, has been the subject of fierce protests. IMAGES AND SOUNDBITES