The French president, Emmanuel Macron, has called a meeting of his defence and security council to discuss the deadly unrest in the Pacific territory of New Caledonia, reports The Guardian.
It is the third such meeting in less than week, the previous two having resulted in the decision to declare a state of emergency in the French territory and then to send reinforcements to help government forces on the ground restore order.
On Sunday, French forces smashed through dozens of barricades in a bid to retake the main road to La Tontouta international airport, which has been closed to commercial traffic since last Tuesday.
Authorities have said the airport will not reopen until midnight on Thursday French time, ignoring a request from Australia and New Zealand for it to be opened so they can evacuate their citizens.
“Republican order will be re-established whatever the cost,” the French high commissioner for New Caledonia, Louis Le Franc, told reporters in the capital Nouméa. If separatists “want to use their arms, they will be risking the worst”, he added.
The warning came as the bodies of two gendarmes who died in New Caledonia, Nicolas Molinari and Xavier Salou, were returned to France on Monday morning.
France’s interior minister, Gérald Darmanin, was at the military base at Vélizy-Villacoublay in the south-west suburbs of Paris to decorate the men posthumously and receive the coffins. Both gendarmes were based in the Paris region.
At least three other people, Indigenous Kanaks, have also been killed in the violence.
According to French media reports on Monday, the number of roadblocks set up and controlled by independence activists is spreading despite the efforts of police and gendarmes.