Violence erupts in French student protests

French police used teargas and water cannon when violence erupted as students turned up the heat on Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin over a jobs law yesterday, while his government struggled to defuse the crisis.

Stone-throwing protesters clashed with police at the end of a march by several thousand university and high school students in Paris and later outside the Sorbonne university. A kiosk was set ablaze and several shop windows were smashed.

Protests across France have gathered in momentum since hundreds of thousands of protesters turned out on March 7 against the law, which critics say reduces job protection for young people. The protests have been largely peaceful so far.

Student leaders said 300,000 to 600,000 marched across France and that 64 of the country's 84 universities were hit by the protests. Officials reported 247,500 protesters nationwide.

"CRS = SS!" chanted protesters at the Sorbonne, comparing the riot police to the leading Nazi troops. At least eight riot police were injured in the unrest and several dozen youths, many of them hooded or masked, were hauled away by police.

The protests could hurt the conservative Mr Villepin's hopes of running for president in 2007. He says the law will help reduce unemployment among the young, now running at 22.8 per cent, more than twice the overall national rate.

Opinion polls show Mr Villepin's popularity has tumbled during the biggest test of his 10 months in office.

Street protests can make or break governments in France. Protests in 1995 badly undermined the then conservative Prime Minister Alain Juppe, who lost snap elections two years later. Trade unions plan another action day tomorrow and hope to top the one million protesters they estimated took part in the March 7 protests. Police estimates were half that figure.

Police fired teargas after 100 students briefly occupied a town hall in the western city of Rennes yesterday. Thousands of students marched in the Mediterranean port city of Marseilles and in Bordeaux in the southwest. In Paris, police in riot gear fired teargas at several dozen youths pelting them with stones after the main march ended at a square only a few blocks from Mr Villepin's Matignon Palace office.

Nearby boutiques and the elite Sciences Po university closed as a precaution as the protests signalled hardening opposition.

"Chirac, Villepin, Sarkozy, your trial period is up!" read one banner in Paris, referring to President Jacques Chirac, his Prime Minister and Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy.