FRANCE: Rioters clash with police across the country after Nicolas Sarkozy wins the Presidential elections

Riot police use water cannons and tear gas to break up crowds of demonstrators, after conservative candidate Nicolas Sarkozy won the French presidential election. Demonstrators clashed with police in Paris's Bastille Square on Sunday (May 6) and security forces fired tear gas at a crowd of several hundred protesters after conservative leader Nicolas Sarkozy was elected president. Reuters reporters saw dozens of people throwing bottles, stones, chairs and other missiles at police who responded with repeated rounds of tear gas and bursts of water cannon in the square, which is associated with leftist protests. Demonstrators chanted "police everywhere, justice nowhere." A motorbike and a van were set on fire. The protesters did not appear to belong to any single group that could be identified. There were also clashes in the southern port of Marseille, with security forces firing tear gas at a crowd of several hundred protesters. In Toulouse in southwest France and Rennes in the west, youths burned rubbish bins. The defeated Socialists portrayed Sarkozy as a danger for France during the election campaign, saying he was authoritarian and likely to exacerbate tensions in the poor, multi-racial suburbs that ring many cities. Thousands of extra police have been drafted in to patrol sensitive areas on Sunday and a Reuters correspondent in the southeastern city of Lyon has reported further clashes between police and leftist sympathisers earlier in the evening.

ITN Source | May 7, 2007

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