Police and rioters clash in Athens

(Vatican Radio) Violence erupted in central Athens last night as hooded extremists battled police on the seventh anniversary of a major Athenian riot. The protesters fired home-made rockets and hurled a rain of petrol bombs at squads of riot police who were ordered to show restraint.  Several cars and shop fronts in the inner-city Exarchia district were burned and smashed.  The police said they found a stock of about 100 petrol bombs on a small wooded hill in the neighbourhood.

Listen to John Carr's report from Athens

Three policemen were taken to hospital for injuries, and at least a dozen protesters were arrested.  And as has become depressingly usual here in Athens, this morning it was the ordinary citizens and shopkeepers who emerged to pick over the damage.

The outburst was supposed to be a commemoration of the fatal shooting by police of a teenager during protests in the Exarchia district in December 2008. That had triggered several days of serious rioting that had gutted large parts of the centre of Athens.

Unrest among far-left youths in Greece has been on the rise since the leftwing government shed its far-left component in the summer.  It’s also fuelled by Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras’s caving in to the demands of Greece’s creditors, with more pension and welfare cuts seemingly on the horizon.