Police Fire Rubber Bullets at Crowds As Paris Labour Law Protest Turns Into Riot

Riot police last night fired rubber pellets and tear gas at students who pelted them with petrol bombs and stones as protests at new labor laws boiled over in the heart of Paris. Police fought running battles with the rioters, who set cars alight and smashed shop windows near the Sorbonne on the Left Bank.

Many of the youths threw paving stones, metal street barriers and tables and chairs ripped from nearby cafes as they taunted police with cries of "CRS equals SS", comparing France’s riot squads to Hitler’s forces.

The CRS responded with a water cannon, tear gas, baton charges and rubber pellets to disperse the rioters, who formed a very small minority of the demonstrators. Police said they arrested 150 people, and that 35 officers suffered injuries.

It followed a day of peaceful protests across France in which almost 250,000 people took to the streets in nearly 200 marches. Police estimated that around 33,000 people marched in Paris, although the main student union said the figure was nearly four times higher. Another protest is planned for tomorrow, when students and union members will march together in an attempt to get the laws repealed.

The protests were against the first employment contract (CPE), a reform championed by the Prime Minister, Dominique de Villepin, which will allow employers to dismiss workers under 26 within their first two years in a job, without giving a reason.

The government says such flexibility will encourage companies to hire thousands of young people and slash youth unemployment. One in four young people in France is unemployed, but the figure rises to 50% in the poor suburbs, the scene of weeks of rioting last autumn.

The job contract was one of the government’s responses to that violence, but students fear it will erode labor protection and leave the young by the wayside. The protests could hurt Mr. de Villepin’s hopes of running for president in 2007.

By late last night, the rioters had been dispersed from the capital’s Boulevard Saint-Michel. The shouts of "Villepin, you’re toast - the students are in the streets!" had died out and calm had returned to the glass-strewn and marijuana-scented boulevard.

It later emerged that a handful of people, thought to be from the far right, were taken in for questioning after attacks on protesters. Wearing helmets and holding batons, they chanted "leftists, get out of our faculties" before being dispersed by riot police.

Students also disrupted rail services in about a dozen towns and cities across the country, the state rail operator said. Youths threw stones at police and vandalized cars in the eastern city of Nancy, while Toulouse University closed after clashes between students who wanted it shut in protest and those who wanted it kept open. Riot police dislodged about 100 students who occupied the city hall at Rennes in north-western France.