Riot police clash with a youth in Lyon as violent protests on pension reforms. Photo: AP source: the AustralianWORKERS at a higher retirement age blocked access to airports in Paris and across the country last night.
Hooded youths, smashed shop Windows in the meantime amid clouds of tear gas outside the capital.
Riot police in black body armour forced striking workers from blocked fuel depots in Western France, recovery of petrol to areas where pumps were dry after weeks of protests over the decision to raise the retirement age of 60 to 62.
Riot officers in the suburb of Paris from Nanterre and the southeastern city of Lyon tear gas sprayed but appeared unable to stop the violence this week after months of largely peaceful protests broke out.
President Nicolas Sarkozy vowed last night that his Union for a popular movement party reform would pass in a Senate vote expected tonight.
Mr Sarkozy said he would "wearing the pension reform through to the end" as k's tolerance for a long tradition of strikes and protest seemed to be waning after weeks of snarled traffic, flights cancelled and decreasing gasoline supplies and now increasing urban violence.
Demonstrators, the main road leading to one of the two terminals at Orly airport last night, blocked, then moved to block the way to the other terminal.
At the airport Charles de Gaulle to the North of Paris, the nation's largest, sang demonstrators the French national anthem before through a police barricade to push.
The CGT Transport Union says protests also completed the Clermont-Ferrand airport in the South and airports in Nice and Nantes disturbed.
With almost a third of France's petrol stations dry, authorities, stepped without incident at night to force open three fuel depots blocked by striking workers for days, Interior Minister Brice Hortefeux said.
Mr Hortefeux warned that the blockades threatened emergency services and can have serious consequences for the whole of the French economy and public health and safety. "The right to strike gives everyone the right to prevent people from work or the right to block things, or the right to prevent travel, "he said.
"The right to protest is not the right to break things, the right to change things on fire, the right to the attack, the right to plunder. we will use all means necessary to these offenders."
In the past week, 1423 people are held for protest-related violence and 123 are facing charges. Police look at video surveillance to find more offenders.
In Nanterre last night about 100 students blocked the entrance to the school and part of the highway for the school, while a "rest team" of about 30 adults in special Red coats tried to keep things calm. Then about 100 other young people arrived and began walked through the streets of the city, smashing shop Windows and throwing stones.
New clashes broke out In Lyon, with rioters throwing projectiles and netting of torches. Police responded with tear gas.
This week's clashes revived memories of student unrest in 2006 that forced the Government to give another very unpopular Labour Bill. And the specter of 2005 riots which spread by poor housing projects with disenfranchised immigrant populations is never far away.
Students planning new protests tonight, with a demonstration in Paris hours before the Senate is expected to approve the pension measure.
AP
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