150 arrested in Paris film protest

MORE than 150 protestors were arrested outside the US embassy in Paris as police broke up a demonstration over an anti-Islam film.

Although the majority of the demonstrators were penned in by police at the Tuileries Gardens, groups of youths and women in full veils reached the Champs-Élysées and started prayers on the world-famous avenue.

Most of those arrested were released after identity checks.

Security at the embassy - and at other US-linked sites in France - has now been stepped up after Interior Minister Manuel Valls warned that Islamic hard-liners were on the sidelines provoking the Paris confrontation and said he feared the possibility of further reaction.

France has Europe's largest population of Muslims and the protest on Saturday was the first in the west against the film. Six police were hurt.

Valls said on France 2 news that he would halt further demonstrations

He warned that it was not just youths from the suburbs who were involved but "groups of "hardline Salafists [ultra-conservative Muslims]".

Valls added: "Across the internet, through journeys to countries such as Afghanistan and Pakistan, there are young people in our own neighbourhoods who may be affected by this ideology of hate."

He will give Cabinet ministers details at the end of this month of a new law he plans to lead the fight against terrorism. It would allow France to try French citizens who "commit acts of terror in other countries or who go to train in terror camps on the Afghan-Pakistan border with the aim of returning to France".

Toulouse scooter killer Mohamed Merah, who killed seven people, admitted he had been in Afghanistan and Pakistan for such training.