Protesters, police clash during Paris’ May Day march

PARIS — Clusters of anarchists and yellow vest protesters disrupted a May Day march in Paris by setting fires and antagonizing riot police squads at the beginning and end, punctuating the route walked peacefully by tens of thousands of people with bursts of tear gas.

Officers fired flash grenades and rubber balls with the tear gas as troublemakers wearing black masks and hoods confronted them in the street and pelted them with stones and other objects.

The confrontations broke out near the start of the main labor march near Montparnasse train station and resumed when police tried to disperse stragglers at the finish, near the Place d’italie in southeast Paris.

The French Interior Ministry said 24 protesters and 14 police officers were injured. The ministry said 28,000 people marched in Paris and more than 164,000 in May Day rallies across the country.

A private company hired by a group of French news outlets, Occurrence, counted 40,000 protesters in Paris, and the CGT union said there were 80,000 participants.

More than 7,400 police officers from across France were deployed in Paris because of the May Day events. The Paris police department said there were 330 arrests.

While some of the people clashing with police wore the yellow vests of the anti-government movement, the peaceful march also had participants in yellow vests waving union flags, joining the traditional May Day march organized by labor unions to show solidarity in rejecting President Emmanuel Macron’s economic policies.