Students throw petrol bombs at police as job protests heat up

FRANCE: Demonstrators overturned cars and threw petrol bombs at police who repelled them with tear gas and water cannon as a show of force by French students against the government over job reforms turned increasingly violent.

Demonstrators clashed with police at 7:00 pm (1800 GMT) when hundreds gathered on the city's Place de la Sorbonne square in the Latin quarter following a protest march.

Protestors also vandalised cafes amid scenes that left the area veiled in tear gas fumes and a bookshop in flames on the square, located near departments of the Sorbonne University. At least one car was set alight nearby.

Police said 35 officers were injured, including nine hospitalised, in clashes in the capital and incidents elsewhere in France towns also left several other officers hurt.

The interior ministry reported 212 arrests across the country, including 147 in Paris.

The protests were organised in anger at the proposed First Employment Contract (CPE), a contested youth jobs measure.

Unions, student groups and the political left say the CPE, which can be broken off without explanation in the first two years, is a licence to hire and fire at will, and are demanding its withdrawal.

Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, who championed the scheme as a key tool in fighting youth unemployment, faces the most serious test of his premiership as the wave of protests paralyses dozens of French universities.

The CPE is aimed at encouraging companies to recruit young people.

The interior ministry said 257,000 people took to the streets in up to 80 towns and cities across France, while some organisers set the figure as high as half a million.

Student leaders said that 120,000 people joined the march through Paris's Left Bank university quarter, although police said there were 30,000.

Large rallies were also held in Marseille, Lyon and Grenoble in the south and southeast, Bordeaux in the southwest, Rennes and Lille in the northwest and north, Clermont-Ferrand, Limoges and Angers in the centre and Strasbourg in the east. Paris, Friday, AFP