Strikes across France intensified on Friday with police firing tear gas at protesters in the city of Lyon. About 1,000 high school students went on strike, overturning rubbish bins, smashing bus stops, and setting fire to stacks of free newspapers. The students and labour unions see President Nicolas Sarkozy's pension reform - raising the retirement age from 60 to 62 - as an attack on their well-deserved social protections. Workers at all 12 of France's fuel producing refineries have also joined the protest. Strikers burned tires outside an oil refinery in Donges, near Nantes in western France.