Thousands marching against government austerity measures fled in panic Thursday when police fired rifles and tear gas after hooded youths smashed store windows. Three people were injured, police said. The violence came 11 months after rioting left about 300 dead following protests over subsidy cuts on food and public transportation. About 8,000 union members and supporters marched in the capital while thousands of others marched across the country in protest of government reforms aimed at cutting a $34 billion foreign debt, fourth-largest in Latin America. The march in Caracas was interrupted when a group of adolescents overturned garbage cans and shouted insults at police. About 20 of the youths began breaking windows in Simon Bolivar Center, a complex on Plaza Caracas, where the march was to end. Police rushed in firing tear gas and shotgun blasts in the air. Three people were injured in the brief confrontation, including Rafael Calma, a photographer for a Caracas newspaper, hit by a bottle thrown by a bystander in the crowd, said police. Police did not say how the other two people were hurt. ``It was the same group of troublemakers. A small group. We acted responsibly,'' said metropolitan police sheriff L.B. Gomez, standing his ground as protesters chanted, ``Police off our streets! The streets are ours!'' ``It's the fault of the government's economic package,'' said a leftist congressman, Ricardo Guttierez, participating in the march. The march was called by the 4 million-member Confederation of Workers, CTV, Venezuela's largest umbrella labor group. The CTV has called on President Carlos Andres Perez to back off on austerity measures it says has hit poorer Venezuelans the hardest. Labor leaders have planned protests this month after Perez' year-old Social Democratic government planned to cut subsidies on gasoline. The economy last year contracted by 8.1 percent and inflation rose to 80 percent under the effects of the austerity measures. Unemployment is about 11 percent, according to independent estimates, up from 8.7 percent last year.
