ATHENS, Greece - March 11, 2010 - Police clashed with stone-throwing youths in Athens on Thursday as tens of thousands of strikers protested against draconian cutbacks aimed at pulling Greece out of a debt crisis shaking the euro zone.

In one central square hundreds of protesters hurled sticks and stones at riot police, who responded by baton-charging the crowd and firing several rounds of teargas.

The clashes came after more than 20,000 protesters marched through Athens beating drums and chanting slogans such as "Plutocrats must pay for the crisis" to mark the second general strike in two weeks.

People threw petrol bombs, smashed shop windows, damaged cars, set garbage containers on fire and hurled lumps of marble torn from steps of the Bank of Greece.

Two protesters and 13 police officers were slightly wounded and 16 protesters detained, police said. But the level of violence was much lower than in the 2008 riots that paralyzed Athens for weeks after the police killing of a teenager.

"Everybody is watching Greece to see the depth, intensity and sustainability of protests," said Theodore Couloumbis, deputy head of the regional think-tank Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy and a professor of international relations at the University of Athens.