Violence flares at Greek anti-austerity protest

Greek police clashed with hooded youths yesterday as thousands demonstrated against austerity measures aiming to end a crippling debt crisis and the country was gripped by a new general strike.

Violence broke out around a union demonstration in the capital with riot police firing tear gas at hooded youths who hurled firebombs and vandalised stores near Parliament and other areas of the city centre.

Police said they had detained 16 people, of whom nine were later arrested, and that 13 officers were hurt after being hit by objects thrown by protesters.

Damage was caused to six shops, four hotel entrances, three banks and two cars in vandalism incidents across the city centre, the police said.

Around 15,000 people joined the demonstration called by the main Greek unions and an earlier street protest by Communist workers.

In the northern city of Thessaloniki, where another 10,000 people marched in two separate demonstrations, protesters threw eggs and yoghurt cartons stolen from a supermarket at a government building, police said.

Unions called out more than one million people on strike in the latest challenge to draconian spending cuts by the Socialist government aiming to reduce the public deficit of 12.7 per cent of output and a debt mountain of nearly €300 billion.

The stoppage crippled public transport and closed schools, hospitals and government offices in the capital.

The protesters held banners blasting the government and the EU which is pressing for even tougher measures.

"Even if they terrorise us, the measures will not pass through," one banner proclaimed. Another said: "We are men, not numbers."

The strikers shouted: "Europe must change or it will sink" and "War with capitalists, that's the response of the workers."

No buses or trams ran and only one underground train line was operational in the capital. Health centres treated only emergencies.

Air traffic controllers walked off the job at midnight and ships were anchored as port workers joined the strike. The national news agency ANA stopped its tickers and newspaper staff stopped work. Tax collectors have been on strike all week.

Christos Fotopoulos, head of a police union, said officers were taking part in rallies in uniform as "the governmental measures are painful and they erase bonuses which account for 50 per cent of our salary."