Police and protesters clash in Paris as unrest spreads across Europe

Police fired tear gas and water cannons at protesters in Paris as a wave of unrest that has hit France and other parts of Europe continues.

More than 100,00 people gathered in Paris alone, with estimates of about 400,000 people across France joining another day of protests as discontent with French President Emmanuel Macron grows.

More than 1000 people were arrested across the country, as protests which started peacefully in the morning became more tense.

Masked protesters hurled objects and fireworks at police, who answered with clouds of tear gas, deafening sound grenades and jets of water cannons.

Officers with megaphones urged protesters to disperse. Some demonstrators panicked as tear-gas canisters landed in their midst, scattering with screams. Veteran protesters shouted after them: “Don’t run!”

Police in Paris were able to keep protesters confined to the city’s south-east and away from central areas.

As night fell, violence erupted at the end of some of the 289 protests counted by the Interior Ministry nationwide. Street fires burned in the cities of Marseille and Lyon.

Police used tear gas in Lyon, Clermont-Ferrand, Strasbourg and Bordeaux and water cannons in Nice and Nantes, French media reported.

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In Nice, far-right extremists fought with demonstrators downtown and 11 people were arrested, regional authorities said.

Several businesses in Paris were seen boarding up their windows and shopfronts to protect themselves.

Some protesters have even spoken out against acts of looting and damaging businesses.

“I don’t support the people that are rioting,” one protester in Paris told 9News.

“We have seen some people breaking some shops and everything, burning some cars.

“I do not agree with those people, I think they are giving bad images for the movement.”

The protests are the latest in a string of demonstrations that started last month as a message against staff shortages at one Paris high school, but has now grown into a fight against soaring costs of fuel and rising inflation.

Pressure is mounting on President Macron, with the French people choosing his successor in May, and the protests are pushing him on both flanks.

The far-right National Rally party has accused his government of failing to protect the public and urged people to channel their anger into votes for its candidate Marine Le Pen.

On the far left, presidential candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon has backed demonstrators and criticised policing that has left some teenage protesters with life-changing injuries.

Protests are also spreading to other parts of Europe, with riot police and soldiers guarding the centre of Milan in Italy.

Marches, consisting predominantly of younger people, also took place in Rome and Turin, but were mostly peaceful.

In Milan, huge crowds of mostly young people gathered as night fell, chanting insults to Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and holding aloft banners such as “No to lies of the state.”

A group of protesters dumped manure outside Italy’s energy regulator and burned a symbolic, oversized electricity bill, images broadcast on local television showed.

-Reported with Associated Press