At the same time, strikers blocked the access road to the airport in the southern port of Marseille for several hours early on Thursday and others held up traffic near the cities of Rouen, Toulon, Le Havre and elsewhere, news reports said. The actions came a day before the start of mid-term school vacations whose impact on the strikes and protests is unclear.
Educations authorities said 312 of the country’s 4,300 high schools had been closed down or disrupted on Thursday by protests among high-school students, some of whom planned a protest march in Paris.
President Sarkozy ordered the police to reopen all the blocked fuel depots and warned of economic dislocations from the continued protests against his determined effort to change France’s retirement plan.
“If this disorder is not ended quickly, the attempt to paralyze the country could have consequences for jobs by disrupting the normal functioning of the economy,” Mr. Sarkozy told his cabinet in remarks released by his office on Wednesday. In public remarks, he said the government would show no weakness towards the hooded youths and protesters who have looted stores, burned cars and clashed with police, calling their actions “cowardly.”
Unions are considering another day of demonstrations next Tuesday. But some union leaders acknowledged that time was running against them, and some quietly acknowledged concern that the largest and most radical French union might be pushing the protests too far.
That union, the C.G.T., was once allied with the Communist Party. It is the largest union among refinery, port, gas and power workers, some of whom are more radical than the union’s leadership.
François Chérèque, head of the second largest French union, the C.F.D.T., called on demonstrators to remain calm and not to give in to provocations, while the white-collar union, the C.F.E.-C.G.C., announced that Tuesday’s demonstration would be its last. Its president, Bernard Van Craeynest, said that in the face of excesses, “it will be necessary without doubt to pause to reorient the actions” of the unions.
He added, “We find ourselves in a situation where the movement is going in all directions.”
But with the more radical union members deployed at choke points for fuel and gasoline supplies, and with more young people protesting, the tone of the demonstrations on Wednesday became more aggressive, making it easier for Mr. Sarkozy to try to shift the public’s focus to the restoration of order.
In Nanterre, youths with hoods and scarves to hide their faces clashed with riot police officers near a high school that was the site of earlier violence, and in Lyon protesters looted stores and fought with the police, sometimes setting fire to cars. Tear gas was used.
The interior minister, Brice Hortefeux, warned rioters, “The right to protest is not the right to break things, the right to set things on fire, the right to assault, the right to pillage.” He added: “We will use all means necessary to get these delinquents.”
The Interior Ministry said that 21 fuel depots had been unblocked since Friday, and that about 1,500 people had been apprehended for violations of social order, 428 of them on Tuesday. There were also work stoppages at two of France’s three terminals for liquefied natural gas, but no immediate risk of shortages.
