Cars burnt, police hurt in French election violence

PARIS, May 7 (Reuters) Hundreds of people were arrested in France overnight in clashes between police and protesters angry over conservative Nicolas Sarkozy's victory in yesterday's presidential election, police said.

Official figures released early today said demonstrators set fire to 367 cars and injured 28 policemen across France, and 270 people were arrested in the violent protests against the tough-talking former interior minister.

Sarkozy made his name as a law-and-order hardliner who also tightened France's immigration laws, making him a hate figure for the left. Slogans spray-painted on the streets of Paris overnight included ''Sarkozy fascist''.

He is also a controversial figure in France's poor and multi-ethnic suburbs, where nationwide riots erupted in 2005.

At the time Sarkozy branded the troublemakers as scum.

Reports and eyewitness accounts suggested the violence was worse than the official statistics indicated because they did not include other incidents such as petrol bomb attacks on buses near Paris or smashed up shop fronts in large cities.

The national tally was also at odds with local figures.

Paris officials said 33 police were injured in the capital alone.

Leftist sympathisers clashed with police in Paris's Bastille Square after Sarkozy's comprehensive victory against Socialist Segolene Royal and security forces fired tear gas.

SHOP WINDOWS SMASHED Youths went on the rampage in adjoining streets, smashing phone cabins and shop windows.

''Everyone got hit,'' said Sophie Wolkowitch, whose pharmacy suffered 14,000 euros of damage.

Similar attacks were reported in the southeastern city of Lyon and the southern city of Toulouse. Bus shelters were smashed in the northern city of Lille and a school was set on fire in the Paris suburb of Evry.

In the northern department clustered around Lille, about 100 cars were torched, the fire brigade said.

In Nantes, 26 people were held for questioning and six police were slightly injured after 1,000 people joined a march against Sarkozy in the western city, said Yves Monard, head of public security of the Loire-Atlantique department.

Cars and shop windows were also damaged in Nantes while to the northwest, in Caen, four police were hurt and an attempt was made to set fire to the local office of Sarkozy's UMP party.

Royal said last week a Sarkozy victory would provoke violence in French suburbs, but an internal police memo obtained by Reuters said there was no large-scale trouble in those areas.

''The second round of the presidential election did not generate any large demonstrations of urban violence in sensitive neighbourhoods,'' said the memo.

It added that the level of violence was above that usually seen on July 14 Bastille Day, France's national holiday, ''but below that of New Year's celebrations''.

REUTERS RS RK2102