French fuel protests block roads for third day amid injuries and racist attacks

France’s “yellow vest” protesters blocked oil depots and roads across the country for a third day in a revolt against fuel price hikes that has seen motorists subjected to racist and homophobic attacks and left hundreds injured.

President Emmanuel Macron however showed no sign that he planned to back down over diesel and petrol price rises due in January that are part of his government’s plans to try and wean the French off fossil fuels.

A handful of skirmishes were reported on Sunday night, including in the northern port city of Calais where a British and an Australian truck driver were detained after trying to force their way through barricades in separate incidents. Both were reported to have been released a few hours after the incidents, which left three people with minor injuries.

Around 13,000 people were manning more than 300 barricades on motorways and roundabouts and other sites on Monday, according to police figures.

That was far less than the 280,000 who turned out on Saturday for the first day of the protests, which are named after the high-visibility vests that French motorists are legally obliged to carry in their vehicles.

But it was still enough to rattle the government, with Prime Minister Edouard Philippe saying that his administration would maintain its plans but acknowledging the "suffering" expressed by the protests.

"A government that always changes its stance, zigzagging through difficulties... would not lead France in the right direction," he told France 2 television.

"We heard anger but also heard suffering, the lack of prospects, the idea that the authorities for a long time did not respond to the concerns and feeling of abandonment felt by part of the population," he said.

A call by a member of the right-wing Debout La France (Stand Up France) party for protesters to descend on Paris on Saturday and "block" the city has been viewed over 165,000 times on Facebook. The grassroots movement emerged on social media last month over fuel prices rises and snowballed into a broader protest over stagnant spending power under Mr Macron, who is seen by many as the “president of the rich” who neglects rural and small-town French.

The “yellow vest” protests had left more than 400 people injured by Sunday evening, official figures said, with numerous incidents of protesters being hit by panicked drivers at blockades - one woman was killed in such an incident - and a handful of police and firefighters injured. There were media reports of more injuries across the country on Monday.

Reports also emerged from many different parts of the country of protesters making racist, homophobic or Islamophobic insults to motorists.

A local elected official in the eastern town of Bourg-en-Bresse and his partner were assaulted and had their car smashed up in a homophobic attack by protesters at a roadblock.

"I heard some of the protesters say ‘I recognise him, he’s a queer’,” Raphaël Duret told a local newspaper, adding that he and his partner were punched and kicked and pulled out of their car, which had its back window and lights smashed. Interior Minister Christophe Castaner condemned the attack in a tweet.

In the western town of Cognac a black woman was insulted by protesters who shouted at her to “go back to her country”. And in the north a woman in a headscarf was forced to remove it by protesters, some of whom did monkey impersonations in front of her.