Pro­test­ers dis­rupt­ed ve­hi­cle traf­fic at Paris’ main air­port and po­lice fired clouds of tear gas in oth­er French cities as peo­ple marched in their thou­sands in a new round of strikes and na­tion­wide demon­stra­tions Thurs­day seek­ing to get Pres­i­dent Em­manuel Macron to scrap pen­sion re­forms that have ig­nit­ed a month­s­long firestorm of pub­lic anger.

In Paris, rat catch­ers set the tone by hurl­ing the ca­dav­ers of ro­dents at City Hall. That protest Wednes­day was one of the more shock­ing il­lus­tra­tions of how Macron’s plans to raise the na­tion­al re­tire­ment age from 62 to 64 have in­fu­ri­at­ed work­ers. Broad­cast­er BFMTV showed the ro­dents’ ema­ci­at­ed corpses be­ing tossed by work­ers in white pro­tec­tive suits.

Nat­acha Pom­met, a leader of the pub­lic ser­vices branch of the CGT trade union, said Thurs­day that Paris’ rat catch­ers want­ed “to show the hard re­al­i­ty of their mis­sion” and that fury with Macron’s pen­sion re­forms is mor­ph­ing in­to a wider move­ment of work­ers ex­press­ing griev­ances over salaries and oth­er is­sues.

“All this anger brings to­geth­er all types of anger,” she said in a phone in­ter­view.

Demonstrators walk by a street fire during a protest Thursday, April 6, 2023 in Nantes, western France. (AP Photo/Jeremias Gonzalez)

Ten pre­vi­ous rounds of na­tion­wide strikes and protests since Jan­u­ary have failed to get Macron to change course, and there was no sign from his gov­ern­ment that Thurs­day’s 11th round of up­heaval would make it back down.

Talks be­tween trade union lead­ers and Prime Min­is­ter Elis­a­beth Borne quick­ly broke up Wednes­day with no break­through, set­ting the stage for pro­test­ers’ re­turn to the streets.

Demonstrators march Thursday, April 6, 2023 in Nantes, western France. (AP Photo/Jeremias Gonzalez)

Crowds marched be­hind unions’ col­ored flags and ban­ners in Mar­seille on the Mediter­ranean coast, Bor­deaux in the south­west, Ly­on in the south­east and oth­er cities. In the west­ern city of Nantes, rum­bling trac­tors joined the pa­rade of marchers and thick clouds of po­lice tear gas were de­ployed against demon­stra­tors. Pub­lic ra­dio France Bleu re­port­ed that po­lice tear gas al­so was fired to dis­perse demon­stra­tors in the Brit­tany city of Rennes.

At Paris’ Charles de Gaulle air­port, about 100 demon­stra­tors blocked a road lead­ing to Ter­mi­nal 1 on Thurs­day morn­ing and en­tered the ter­mi­nal build­ing, the air­port op­er­a­tor said. It said flights were un­af­fect­ed, but trav­el­ers tow­ing their lug­gage had to weave their way past flag-wav­ing pro­test­ers.

A CGT rep­re­sen­ta­tive at the air­port, Loris Fore­man, told BFMTV that the demon­stra­tors want­ed “to show the world and Eu­rope that we don’t want to work to 64 years old.”

Strik­ing work­ers had less of an im­pact on trans­port ser­vices than dur­ing pre­vi­ous days of protests. But the march­es around the coun­try showed that op­po­si­tion to the pen­sion re­form re­mains strong.

It’s “a deep anger, a cold anger,” said So­phie Bi­net, the new­ly elect­ed gen­er­al sec­re­tary of the CGT union. She de­scribed Macron’s gov­ern­ment as “com­plete­ly dis­con­nect­ed from the coun­try and com­plete­ly bunker­ized in its min­istries.”

“We can’t turn the page un­til the re­form is with­drawn,” she said, promis­ing more protests.

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By JOHN LEICES­TER and OLEG CE­TINIC

PARIS (AP)