Rocks and tear gas in Chile's annual youth protests

By Rodrigo Martinez

SANTIAGO (Reuters) - Masked youths threw stones at police who responded by firing tear gas and water cannon in the Chilean capital on Friday at the start of annual protests against the government and the country's free-market system.

Dozens of youths, some in school uniforms, threw objects into the Santiago's main street, the Alameda. Some wearing hoods or bandannas over their faces scattered pink pamphlets that read "Popular Union of Students."

Police in armoured vehicles sped through the street spraying clouds of tear gas as officers riot gear rounded up youths and bundled them into police buses as sirens blared. Barriers were erected cordoning off the presidential palace nearby. Police said they had detained 185 people.

The protests were aimed at Chile's capitalist-style economic model and the government, which the groups say manipulates the education system to favour the wealthy and exclude the poor.

President Michelle Bachelet condemned the violence.

"Democracy in Chile is solid and there is no justification for violence," she told reporters as riot police in flak jackets and helmets manned intersections and street corners.

Two small bomb blasts have rocked banks in the two weeks running up to Saturday's anniversary of "Day of the Young Combatant." The day marks the deaths of two brothers, Eduardo and Rafael Vergara, during Augusto Pinochet's 1973-90 dictatorship.

Bachelet was herself briefly detained and tortured along with her mother during Pinochet's harsh dictatorship, in which nearly 3,200 people were killed.