Paris climate march: French police use tear gas at protesters to clear Paris

French riot police fought running battles with protesters on Saturday in Paris, after a climate march was disrupted by masked demonstrators and representatives of the "gilet jaunes" movement.

More than 7,500 police officers had been deployed to stop any violence, amid fears the protesters and the radical "black blocs" would infiltrate a climate change march in the capital.By mid-afternoon, police had made 137 arrests and pushed back a group of around 100 protesters that had gathered on the Champs-Elysees shopping avenue, the Paris police prefecture said.

Groups wearing black clothing associated with the so-called black bloc anarchist movement formed barricades, set fire to bins and a motorbike, and threw paint over the front of a bank.

Similar skirmishes occurred later in the march with the prefecture again attributing violence to black blocs. Police responded with tear gas.

The violence tarnished an otherwise peaceful march that brought thousands of people, including some yellow vests, onto the streets, a day after marches in Paris and other cities worldwide to demand government action against climate change.

Demonstrators carried slogans like "End oil now" and "End of the world" while some held carnival effigies, including one of President Emmanuel Macron wearing a crown marked: "King of bla-bla".

The "gilets jaunes" movement started on November 17 on social media as a response to hikes in fuel prices and has since become a wider protest of social inequalities.