PARIS, March 17 (Xinhuanet) -- Protests against a new youth labor law heated up in France on Friday as police detained some 300 people nationwide, the French Interior Ministry said.

    The ministry said some 257,000 people took part in the protests in 80 towns and cities across France, while organizers said the figure was as high as half a million.

    In the capital only, 187 people had been arrested, Paris police chief Pierre Mutz said on Friday, adding that in clashes with protesters, 46 police officers were injured and 11 of them hospitalized.

    According to Mutz, 2,500 police were deployed in Paris on Thursday when the protests heated up overnight in the Latin university district. Several shops' show windows were broken, and five rioters who had broken windows of jewelry shops were arrested.

    "We can't put one policeman in front of every shop," Mutz said.

    Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy blamed militants, "hooligans" and "louts" from suburbs of Paris for the violence.

    "There were a few hundred delinquents who came to fight," he told journalists after meeting police and firemen in central Paris.

    "Among them there were extreme left and extreme right hooligans and louts from a number of neighborhoods."