Rioting youth stands by a burning barricade in the center of Athens as riots went on for a third day in the Greek capital on Monday, Dec. 8, 2008. Gangs of youths are smashing their way through central Athens and Thessaloniki, torching stores and buildings after the fatal police shooting of a teenager in the worst rioting Greece has seen in decades.

Athens, Greece ? Gangs of youths smashed their way through central Athens, Thessaloniki and other Greek cities on Monday, torching stores, buildings and cars in the third day of mayhem after the fatal police shooting of a teenager.

In the country’s worst rioting in decades, dozens of shops, banks and even luxury hotels had their windows smashed and burned as youths fought running battles with riot police. Black smoke rose above the city center, mingling with clouds of tear gas. Broken glass littered the streets.

In an outpouring of rage, high school and university students joined self-styled anarchists in throwing everything from fruit to rocks and Molotov cocktails at police and attacked police stations throughout the day.

“Cops! Pigs! Murderers!” protesters screamed at riot police.

Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis, who has already faced a growing number of sometimes violent demonstrations, called an emergency Cabinet meeting Monday night.

“All the dangerous and unacceptable events that occurred because of the emotions that followed the tragic incident cannot and will not be tolerated,” Karamanlis said in a live televised address Monday. “The state will protect society.”

But his calls for calm went unheeded. The widely televised scenes of destruction are likely to further undermine an increasingly unpopular government that has been rocked by financial scandals and retains a razor-thin majority of just one seat in the 300-member Parliament.

Amid the riots, about 10,000 protesters from the Communist Party of Greece and another left-wing party marched through the center of Athens to protest the teenager’s death.

Greek media also reported fires and destruction in the central cities of Larissa, Trikala, as well as in Corinth to the west of Athens, Piraeus, Corfu and the northern town of Veria.

In Athens, rioters torched the capital’s massive Christmas tree in central Syntagma Square. As the hooded youths moved on, some protesters posed for photos in front of the blaze, and others sang the Greek version of “O Christmas Tree.”

The windows of two of Athens’ luxury hotels, the Athens Plaza and the Grande Bretagne on Syntagma Square, were smashed. A hotel guard at the Athens Plaza said its guests had been evacuated.

A lone man with a bucket of water struggled to extinguish a fire in the ground floor of the Foreign Ministry, opposite Parliament.

The four-story Olympic Airways office building in central Athens was completely burned in the lawlessness, as well as a Greek bank and dozens of other stores on Athens’ central streets.

Rioters, meanwhile, set up burning barricades across downtown streets.

Scenes of destruction also unfolded in Thessaloniki, where hundreds of masked and hooded youths hurled rocks and Molotov cocktails at storefronts and riot police, who responded with tear gas.

The fire departments of both cities rushed to respond to dozens of fires. In Athens, rioters surrounded one small fire truck as it tried to extinguish a blaze, smashing the truck’s windows before setting it alight.

Interior Minister Prokopis Pavlopoulos described the riots as “unacceptable” but insisted that police were responding as well as they could to the widespread destruction to property.

“Not a single life is in danger … That is very important,” Pavlopoulos said after the two-hour emergency Cabinet meeting. “Human life is top priority. Property comes next.”

“Under no circumstances will the government tolerate what is happening,” he said.

Massive riots first erupted across the country Saturday after 15-year-old Alexandros Grigoropoulos was fatally shot by a police officer in Athens’ often volatile Exarchia district.

The circumstances surrounding the shooting are unclear, but the two officers involved have been arrested; one has been charged with murder and the other as an accomplice.