French police have clashed with striking prison guards at Europe’s largest jail on the fourth day of walkouts across the country over security concerns. Officers fired teargas as scuffles broke out at the Fleury-Mérogis prison, south of Paris, where guards are protesting after a series of attacks on staff.

The French president, Emmanuel Macron, has promised to draw up a national prisons plan to address concerns by the end of February. The attacks that sparked the guards’ protest have highlighted security problems and radicalisation inside often overcrowded French prisons.  In the latest outbreak of violence, two guards were injured after an attack by prisoners at the Borgo jail in Corsica, the justice ministry said on Friday. Outside the entrance to Fleury-Mérogis jail, which has more than 4,300 inmates, about 150 striking guards built a barricade of burning tyres and wooden pallets to prevent their colleagues from getting to work.(theguardian)…[+]