Protesters blocked roads, lit blazes and were met with volleys of tear gas on Wednesday in Paris and elsewhere in France, heaping pressure on President Emmanuel Macron by attempting to give his new prime minister a baptism of fire.

In one incident clashes took place between police and protesters near the Gare du Nord train station early Wednesday afternoon.

Earlier, police used tear gas to bar the protesters from barging into the station and moved them on.

A standoff a few hundred meters away resulted in French police charging and forcibly pushing back protesters using batons.

The government's interior ministry announced 250 arrests in the first hours of what was a planned day of nationwide demonstrations against Macron, budget cuts and other complaints.

Although falling short of its self-declared intention to “Block Everything,” the protest movement that started online over the summer caused widespread hot spots of disruption, defying an exceptional deployment of 80,000 police who broke up barricades and swiftly made arrests.

AP Video shot by Patrick Hermansen

Production by Jeffrey Schaeffer