Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption The BBC's Christian Fraser says President Sarkozy faces a testing few days 
 
 A fifth day of protests in France against proposed pension reforms brought 825,000 people on to the streets, police said, although unions put the figure at 2.5m to 3m. 
 
 The government wants to raise the retirement age from 60 to 62 and the full state pension age from 65 to 67. 
 
 Most oil refineries have been hit by strike action, causing fuel shortages at some airports and filling stations. 
 
 A further day of strikes is scheduled for Tuesday. 
 
 The pension reforms have already been approved by the National Assembly, the lower house of the French parliament. 
 
 The upper house, the Senate, has endorsed the key articles on raising the retirement age, and is due to vote on the full text on Wednesday. 
 
 Public and private sector workers took part in strikes on Saturday across France, in cities including Paris, Marseille, Lyon, Bordeaux, Lille and Toulouse. Unions had called for more than 200 marches nationwide. 
 
 "We are not here to bring France to its knees and create a shortage, we are here to make ourselves heard," Christian Coste, of the CGT trade union, told the Associated Press. 
 
 A group of what the police described as anarchists operated on the fringes of the main demonstration, says the BBC's Hugh Schofield in Paris. 
 
 As the protest drew to a close, they began ransacking café terraces, breaking windows and setting fire to bins. 
 
 Some of them briefly occupied the Opera House at Bastille. 
 
 The clashes did not last long, but they are a reminder to the government and unions of how quickly things can get out of hand, our correspondent says. 
 
 Panic buying 
 
 All 12 refineries in mainland France have been affected by strike action. Ten have shut down or are in the process of closing. A number of fuel depots have been blockaded. 
 
 However, a pipeline supplying the two main airports in Paris, Charles de Gaulle and Orly, is now back in service. It was cut off by strike action, raising fears that Charles de Gaulle would run out of fuel by Tuesday. 
 
 France also has a strategic fuel reserve which holds up to three months of supplies. 
 
 However, some 10% of filling stations have run out of petrol and panic buying has broken out in some areas. 
 
 Pension protest numbers Saturday 16 October: 825,000 (police) - 2.5-3m (unions) 
 
 Tuesday 12 October: 1.2m - 3.5m 
 
 Saturday 2 October: 899.000 - 3m 
 
 Thursday 23 September: 997,000 - 3m 
 
 Tuesday 7 September: 1.2m - 2.7m 
 
 In Marseille, rubbish is piling up around the port amid a strike by bin collectors that has now lasted four days. 
 
 More than 300 high schools have been affected by strikes and blockades - about one in 15 across the country - as students have joined the pension protests in the past week. 
 
 Lorry drivers will decide on Monday whether to join the strikes. 
 
 More than one million people took to the streets in the previous national protest on Tuesday, according to police. Trade unions organisers said 3.5m had taken part. 
 
 The last weekend day of demonstrations was Saturday 2 October, when the numbers were about 900,000 according to police and 3m according to unions. 
 
 Seventy percent of people polled this week think the sporadic strikes will build into a national protest movement like the one in 1995, and over half said they would support it. 
 
 In 1995, three continual weeks of strikes by public and transport workers forced the government to abandon plans for economic reforms, including raising the retirement age. ||||| France's main airport has only a few days' worth of jet fuel left, it was announced today, as the strikes against government pension plans continued to disrupt infrastructure. 
 
 The transport ministry warned of the fuel shortage at the Roissy-Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris as hundreds of thousands took part in another national protest against President Nicolas Sarkozy's bill to raise the retirement age. 
 
 The country has already endured four days of strikes, affecting flights, rail services, hospitals and schools. Diesel supplies were running low in parts of France as unions announced that workers at all 12 fuel-producing refineries were now on strike, and many depots were being blockaded. Police yesterday forced three crucial fuel depots to reopen. 
 
 A ministry spokesman said officials were working to restore aviation fuel supplies, and the transport minister, Dominique Bussereau, said there was no reason to fear a general shortage. 
 
 The fuel supply into the Paris region and international airports was cut yesterday from a pipeline running south from Le Havre. Trapil, the company that operates the pipeline to the Paris airports, said Roissy-Charles de Gaulle could run out of fuel as early as next week. 
 
 A transport ministry spokesman said reserves would last until late on Monday or Tuesday. But he said the pipeline was now working intermittently, adding: "We are exploring possible solutions to supply the airport [at Roissy]. We are confident." 
 
 Bussereau authorised oil companies to use some reserves after trucking companies complained of difficulties finding fuel. 
 
 About 10% of petrol stations have run out of fuel and panic buying has broken out in some areas. A sign at a station in Feyzin, near Lyon, announced a fuel shortage at all pumps and frustrated motorists reported other problems. 
 
 "When the government says there will be no shortage, it means there will be a shortage," said Bernard Martin, a 60-year-old retiree who found no fuel at a Carrefour gas station in Ecully, near Lyon. "Since this morning, there is no more diesel fuel." 
 
 Strikers at oil refineries said their protest was about fighting recession-induced government spending cuts, such as Sarkozy's plan to raise the minimum retirement age from 60 to 62, and from 65 to 67 for a full state pension. 
 
 "[These protests are] an attempt to say stop abusing the workers and citizens," Christian Coste, head of the CGT Union at Total's La Mede refinery, said. "We are not here to bring France to its knees and create a shortage, we are here to make ourselves heard." Workers have been striking for five days straight at the refinery in southern France. 
 
 In cities around France excluding Paris, some 340,000 protesters were out in protest by midday, according to the interior ministry. Union figures have been consistently far higher than official counts. 
 
 On the streets of Marseille, garbage was left uncollected for the fourth straight day and firefighters had to extinguish some rubbish piles set on fire. 
 
 The pension reforms are seen by unions as an attack on their near-sacred social protections. The government says that is the only way to stop a €32bn (£28bn) annual pension shortfall ballooning to €50bn by 2020 and insists people must work longer because they are living longer. 
 
 The reforms have already been approved by the national assembly, the lower house of the French parliament. The senate has endorsed the key articles on raising the retirement age, and is due to vote on the full text on Wednesday. 
 
 "The French understand that those who are blocking this country are at the head of the government," CFDT union leader Francois Chereque said. 
 
 The CGT union called for the strikes at the SNCF train authority to be strengthened. About one-third of fast trains were hobbled by strikes yesterday, though the Eurostar train to London was running normally today. 
 
 A sixth day of protest is set for Tuesday, a day before the senate vote. In another sign of growing protest, truck drivers – the heavyweights of French demonstrations because of their ability to block roads – have heeded a call to join the action. 
 
 Maxime Dumont, head of the CFDT union's trucking section, said drivers could block fuel depots, refineries and food warehouses and clog roads by driving slowly along them. "In the transport sector we can do a bit more to help the workers. We are going to join the movement to make the government give way," Dumont said. 
 
 More than a million people took to the streets on Tuesday, according to police. Trade unions organisers said 3.5m had taken part. 
 
 About 70% of people polled this week think the strikes will build into a national protest movement like the one in 1995, and more than half of those questioned said they would support it. 
 
 France has a long tradition of overpowering unpopular government proposals through militancy on the street, although analysts believe many French people are reluctantly coming to terms with the fact that raising the retirement age in line with other European countries is inevitable – though 62 would still be one of the lowest retirement ages in Europe. 
 
 Elsewhere, thousands of students and teachers across Italy demonstrated yesterday against planned cuts in education, while Portugal's minority government faced a battle in parliament over abrupt tax hikes and deep spending cuts. 
 
 In Greece, riot police used teargas on hundreds of culture ministry workers yesterday to end a labour dispute that shut down the country's top attraction, the Acropolis, for three days.
– Judging by the throngs on the streets of France today—somewhere between 800,000 and 3 million, depending on who's counting—it's safe to say that Nicolas Sarkozy's plan to raise the retirement age from 60 to 62 is not all that popular. (Another day of protests is set for Tuesday, the day before a Senate vote.) Meanwhile, strikes at refineries have caused nationwide fuel shortages—serious enough that Paris' Charles de Gaulle airport warned planes to make sure they land with enough fuel to get home. "They must come with a maximum capacity in their fuel tanks," said a spokesman. "Obviously, these instructions apply only to short- and medium-haul flights" because oceanic flights can't "double carry" fuel. The finance minister went on TV to insist "there is no reason, no reason, I repeat, to panic because there is no risk of shortages." Late today, a key pipeline that supplies the airport resumed service, easing the immediate concern. More details from the AP, BBC, and the Guardian.