Fresh clashes rock France as protesters march on

PARIS: Clashes erupted across France on Saturday as protesters took to the streets, a week after marches that degenerated into violence and prompted a firm security backlash from President Emmanuel Macron, who is scrambling to restore order.

Police arrested nearly 1,000 people as officers faced "an extremely elevated level of violence" from black-clad "ultra-left" extremists, Interior Minister Laurent Nunez said.

Riot police squads fired tear gas at protesters in the capital as well as in Marseille, Lyon, Bordeaux, Lille, Toulouse, Montpellier and Nantes.

Two people were "seriously" injured, Nunez said: one man in Toulouse, who reportedly had fingers blown off, and another person in Clermont-Ferrand. He did not give details of either case.

Authorities had deployed 70,000 security personnel across the country for the new marches, called to protest the cost of living.

The violence came a week after rioting that saw public buildings vandalised, hundreds of shops looted and 2,700 people arrested, casting a pall over the country six months before an election to choose Macron's successor.

Nunez said Saturday's outcome was more "positive" than a week ago, with more police on the streets acting more rapidly, conducting more pre-demonstration checks and better protecting businesses.

But there was widespread anger at the government over a protest crackdown viewed as an assault on the right to protest.

- POLICE BATTLE 'RIOTERS' -

Saturday's demonstrations drew between 410,000 and 800,000 people across the country, according to different estimates by authorities and the organising CGT union.

The main Paris march had between 110,000 and 250,000 attendees, according to those sources.

Macron's government has ordered police to prevent protesters reaching city centres, where shops are concentrated, and in Paris and some other cities, partial curfews were imposed in certain urban zones.

The French president had ordered non-union demonstrations be banned as "illegitimate."

In Paris, where many shops had boarded up windows to prevent looting, and the Louvre and the Musee d'Orsay museums shut for the day, the main demonstration passed off largely peacefully.

The march had been pushed to the capital's southeast rim under a last-minute order by authorities.

Afterwards, though, clashes broke out as the crowd was dispersing, with Nunez blaming "500 rioters" at the back of the march.

AFP journalists saw police charge several times, blasting tear gas and using batons against some, mostly young, protesters.

"They were just taking people down, you know, beating protesters," one demonstrator bleeding from a baton blow to his face, who gave his first name as David, told AFP.

- ULTRA-RIGHT VS ULTRA-LEFT -

Thousands of protesters in the western city of Nantes broke through lines of police firing tear gas and a water cannon to reach the city centre, an AFP journalist witnessed.

Emma, 23, who came out in the northwest city of Rennes, denounced the bans on demonstrations and the "repression" of protests by high school students demanding better learning conditions.

Marching in the rain at the head of the protest in the northern city of Lille, 47-year-old Delphine insisted: "Neither the president, nor the weather will stop me from demonstrating."

In Lyon, police used tear gas to disperse around 1,000 people gathered in the south of the city.

"If they ban protests, that means we're heading more and more towards a regime that is fascist, that is dictatorial," said one 20-year-old protester in Lyon, who gave only his first name, Silem.

In the southern cities of Cannes and Montpellier, far-right activists clashed with "ultra-left militants", in what authorities said was an unprecedented development.

There was looting on the sidelines of the marches in Marseille and Grenoble, police said.

The Yellow Vests, who staged disruptive protests against Macron eight years ago, called for more demonstrations on Oct 31 for "the freedom to protest."

Far-left presidential candidate Jean-Luc Melenchon, who marched in Paris, said the movement "is going to repeat itself every week."

- LE PEN PROTEST -

Tensions were heightened by a rally in the city of Orleans by far-right leader Marine Le Pen's National Rally party to kick off her campaign for the presidential election.

Thousands of counter-protesters chanting anti-fascist slogans marched in the city.

The unrest across France highlighted the febrile political atmosphere ahead of the vote, in which Le Pen leads in surveys.

Inflation in France, particularly affecting the cost of fuel, has surged since the start of the Middle East war in February.

"I'm going to try and instill a bit of optimism," said the four-time presidential hopeful, who has cast herself as the law-and-order candidate, ahead of her first major campaign speech on Sunday.

Protests have also broken out in Italy, Belgium, Spain and Portugal over different issues, yet with some overlap on inflation and education problems. --AFP