Paris unrest moves to Sorbonne
2006-03-16 22:53
Paris - Riot police fired tear gas and
water cannon to break up youth protests outside the Sorbonne
university in Paris on Thursday after a day of demonstrations
against a plan to loosen job protection for young workers.
Several thousand students at the Sorbonne, a centre of the
1968 student protests that shook France, pelted police with
stones and bottles and cracked the window of a bank before the
police responded.
They scattered as clouds of tear gas billowed up from
canisters on the square, but many of them - often hooded or
masked - regrouped to resume their assault on police protecting
the main building of the city's oldest university.
At one point, they chanted "CRS - SS", comparing the CRS
riot police to the elite Nazi guard.
Earlier on Thursday, a huge crowd of university and high
school students peacefully marched through Paris, ending in a
chic neighbourhood where a violent minority clashed with police.
Student leaders estimated that crowd at 120 000 but police
reported only one-quarter of that.
The students are protesting against a new labour contract
meant to help reduce youth unemployment introduced by Prime
Minister Dominique de Villepin, whose ambitions in the
presidential vote next year could be hurt by the unrest.