French President Emmanuel Macron has promised that justice “will be done” after the first Yellow Vest protests of the new year were again marked by violent clashes in Paris.

Some 50,000 protesters took to the streets across France on Saturday, according to Interior Minister Christophe Castaner.

Police said 34 people were arrested in Saturday’s Yellow Vest protests in Paris, and figures are yet to emerge indicating how many injuries were suffered by officers or protesters.

The turnout seemed something of a revival for the protests after declining numbers in the last weeks of 2018.

The informal movement began in November by criticising a proposed hike in fuel prices, but protesters have since raised broader demands about costs of living as well as some more political issues.

Protesters and police clashed repeatedly on the Left Bank riverside in Paris and on a footbridge across the Seine on Saturday, with violence also reported in the Champs-Elysees area later in the evening.

Paris is hella lit rn DAYUM https://t.co/6QAsKPKaJr

— CURE (@CureHipHop) January 5, 2019

Few turned out during the holiday season. Mr Macron had offered an expensive package of tax cuts and pay bonuses to appease protesters demanding improved living standards.

“You can’t see as far as the end of the street,” one young protester said as the Boulevard Saint-German filled with demonstrators wearing the bright yellow safety bibs that have become the movement’s symbol.

“For the beginning of the year it’s very good,” Leslie Joly, a 27-year-old logistics manager from an area outside Paris, added.

But for Macron’s government, it was the scenes of violence that marked the day, as protesters clashed with police on the banks of the Seine and on a pedestrian bridge.

The small Line News agency got more than 1.7 million Twitter views for footage showing a man – apparently a boxer – taking on riot police with his bare hands and, along with other protesters forcing them back on the bridge.

A figure wearing the same clothing can be seen in another clip apparently kicking a policeman who has fallen to the ground.

Castaner shared a tweet from a police trade union saying the man had been identified, and described it as a “cowardly and intolerable attack”.

But radical leftist leader Jean-Luc Melenchon, who has backed the protest movement that initially sought – with success – the cancellation of planned fuel tax rises, took a different view.

“Hand-to-hand combat on the bridges of Paris,” Melenchon tweeted. “Are the authorities who give such orders republicans?”

Government spokesman Benjamin Griveaux meanwhile said he had to be evacuated from his office after the door of his ministry building was forced by persons who stole heavy machinery from the street outside.

“Once again an extreme violence has attacked the Republic – its guardians, its representatives, its symbols,” Mr Macron wrote on Twitter, adding: “Justice will be done.”

https://twitter.com/JackPosobiec/status/1081611293524746240

Mr Macron has promised a national debate on the wide range of issues raised by the movement, including taxation, the cost of living, democracy and public services.

“Everyone must regain self-control to bring about debate and dialogue,” he urged.

Fires and smoke turn the Rue Balzac into a vision of hell. Photo: PA/Tenani Serge

Paris police had estimated protester numbers in the city at 3500, up from 800 a week earlier and 2000 the week before that.

The demonstrations in the capital started off calmly but took a violent turn mid-afternoon when protesters heading along the quays of the Seine towards the National Assembly clashed with riot police.

Crowds of tourists streamed away from the Musee d’Orsay modern art museum on the riverside as the acrid fumes filled the air.

Blocked by police, protesters eventually fled the gas but reassembled near the National Assembly, with some setting fires on the Boulevard Saint-Germain before police again forced them to retreat.

Clashes later broke out in and around the Champs-Elysees in the early evening, with television broadcasts showing several cars burnt out on a side street.

Countrywide, numbers remained far below those recorded in the first few weeks of the movement, when more than 280,000 took part, according to official figures.

-AAP