Riot police firing tear gas and brandishing batons clashed on Tuesday with bands of youths who shattered windows and looted shops at a major Paris train station. Officials said nine people were arrested.
Officers and police dogs charged at groups of marauding youths, some of them wearing hoods, who mingled with commuters and travelers at the Gare du Nord -- one of Paris' most important transport hubs.
As Tuesday shifted into yesterday and officers cleared the station, the melee spilled out onto the surrounding streets. Police ordered spectators to disperse and threatened to charge as small groups of youths set fire to wooden barricades and garbage cans and pelted passing tourist buses with sticks.
Earlier on Tuesday, in the station, youths threw trash cans and other objects at officers and set fire to an information booth.
One woman was evacuated by paramedics for tear gas inhalation.
Groups of dazed tourists and commuters negotiated overturned garbage cans and downed potted plants, dragging their bags over the glass-strewn floors.
Cyril Zidou, a 24-year-old electrician, said he was coming home from the gym "when I just got gassed."
Youths broke windows of a sports-goods store, reaching through the shattered glass to grab boxes of shoes. Passers-by also joined in the looting.
Into the late evening, groups of officers were still periodically charging youths who took flight in stairwells and other parts of the station. Paris police said officers made nine arrests.
The violence did not appear directly related to France's presidential election in under four weeks, but highlighted the social and economic tensions that the country's new leader will inherit when he or she takes power in May.
Lines from Gare du Nord radiate out to the same suburbs north of Paris where rioting erupted in 2005. That violence was born of pent-up anger -- especially among youths of immigrant origin -- over years of high unemployment and inequalities. Those issues have both figured in the presidential campaign.
A Paris city hall official said about 100 people were involved in the violence late on Tuesday evening.
Hundreds more milled around the station, watching the pandemonium. Some youths swung metal bars. They attacked automatic drink dispensers, smashed windows and lights. Some trash cans were set on fire.
Mohamed Mamouni, a shopkeeper, said he was bedding down overnight in his cellphone store to guard it. He said he chased away youths who smashed a hole in his window.
"I arrived just in time," he said.
The clashes forced subway and commuter lines to skip their stops at the station for several hours. Its long-distance rail hub and terminal for Eurostar trains that go to Britain were unaffected.
The melee started after a man without a Metro ticket punched two inspectors during a routine ticket check, said officials from Paris' RATP public transport authority. Youths attacked the inspectors and later turned on police officers patrolling the station.
"The inspectors were hit with projectiles, as were the officers who came to assist them," said Luc Poignant, an official for the Force Ouvriere police union.
Police said the ticket-less man was in custody.
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