Buenos Aires (AFP) - Argentine police fought running battles Wednesday with hundreds of protesters, including numerous football fans, during an anti-austerity march by pensioners in Buenos Aires.

Scores of riot police used tear gas, rubber bullets and water cannon to try to disperse stone-throwing protesters, many of whom wore football jerseys for what turned out to be one of the most violent demonstrations yet against President Javier Milei’s budget-slashing policies.

The demonstrators, many waving national flags and pictures of the late football great Diego Maradona, were met by a major security presence outside Congress, which was in session when the protests began.

Columns of riot police on foot, backed by officers on motorbikes, fought for over two hours to clear a central avenue of protesters who threw firecrackers, stun grenades and stones taken from broken-up sidewalks.

A patrol car and garbage cans were set on fire and several streets barricaded with debris.

Thirty-one people were arrested, police said.

A video of a police officer pushing and hitting an elderly woman who fell to the ground, her head bleeding, has been shared thousands of times on social media.

- ‘Dictatorship’ -

The protestors chanted “Out with them all” and “Milei, garbage, you are the dictatorship!”, comparing his rule to that of Argentina’s 1976-1983 military junta.

The protest is the latest in a years-long series of pensioner demonstrations, always on a Wednesday, that usually draw just a few dozen people.

This week, several football clubs called for a show of solidarity with pensioners, some of whom have been teargassed or baton-charged in recent protests over their diminishing purchasing power.

Fans of River Plate, Boca Juniors, Racing, Independiente and several other clubs joined the march.

Emotions have been running high in the South American country with the start of the trial Tuesday of seven medical staff accused of homicide over Maradona’s death in 2020.

Maradona died alone in a rented house in Buenos Aires, where he was being cared for after brain surgery.

He died of heart failure and acute pulmonary edema and his medical team is accused of having been criminally negligent in his care.

For the past week, calls to support struggling pensioners have been circulating with a video from 1992 of Maradona stating: “You have to be a real coward not to defend retirees.”

“Ole, Ole, Diego, Diego,” some of the protesters shouted Wednesday.

While pensioners have been complaining for years, their economic situation has worsened dramatically under self-professed “anarcho-capitalist” Milei.

“We have to unite and take to the streets to defend our rights and our sovereignty,” 60-year-old Patricia Mendia, who was wearing a Quilmes club jersey, said as she marched alongside her 84-year-old mother.

Security Minister Patricia Bullrich posted a photo on her X account showing a line of police facing off with protesters whom she dismissed as “hooligans.”

Pensioners have taken the most pain in a year of drastic austerity.

Pensions increases have fallen far short of inflation.

Nearly 60 percent of retirees receive only the minimum amount, equivalent to some $340 per month.

Last year, Milei vetoed a law that would have increased pensions by a fraction of the boost needed to maintain their purchasing power.

He has also scrapped price controls on medicines, forcing some pensioners to choose between food and life-saving drugs.