Sawt Falasteen - Tensions erupt at Paris protest as police car attacked

The nationwide protest came just under three months after the point-blank killing by a policeman of a youth outside Paris at a traffic check sparked over a week of rioting in Paris and elsewhere.

Hundreds of people wearing black and in hoods broke away from the main march of several thousand people in Paris

They smashed the windows of a bank branch and threw objects at a police car stuck in traffic, an AFP reporter said.

Paris police said that the police car was attacked with a crowbar and only the intervention of an anti-riot police unit allowed the release of the vehicle.

A video later published by the BFMTV channel and shared on the internet showed a group of masked protesters running after the car, repeatedly kicking it, as one man smashes a window with a crowbar.

An officer gets out and brandishes his service weapon, but does not fire it and gets back in the vehicle.

Paris police chief Laurent Nunez said three people had been arrested over the incident.

Unions said some 80,000 people were expected to protest across France, responding to a call by the radical left including the hard-left France Unbowed (LFI) party but police put the number at 13,800.

J.AbuHassan--SF-PST