More than 1,500 French riot police launched Thursday a second operation to clear anti-capitalist protesters who have been squatting on the site of a planned new airport for a decade.

An initial operation last month to clear the demonstrators from Notre-Dames-des-Landes in western France prompted days of furious clashes between the two sides in clouds of tear gas.

The government had vowed to clear the rural camp, which activists bill as a utopian leftist farming community, after scrapping plans for the airport in January.