GLOBAL UPRISING 2014 -- Violence Sweeps Across BOSNIA as the People PROTEST

At least 150 people were injured, as protesters across the former Yugoslav republic of Bosnia rebel against corruption, joblessness and political stagnation. Scuffles have reached the presidential residency, resulting in the use of water cannon.

Several major cities in the Balkan state are gripped by dissent, which started as a local unemployment rally and grew into a nationwide protest -- the worst outburst of violence since the regional war ended back in 1995.

The unrest that blew up in the capital, Sarajevo, on Wednesday had quickly evolved by Friday into violent scuffles with law enforcement, and the setting of government buildings on fire. There were at least 105 injured by the end of the week, as police launched stun grenades and rubber bullets at angry egg and stone-throwing demonstrators.

With one in five people in the country living below the poverty line (by Reuters' estimates), the numbers that took to the streets were great. Eyewitnesses reported on Friday that as many as 6,000 people were on the streets of the capital Sarajevo, which has a population of about 527,000. Two cars and a police cabin were set on fire, as the raging crowd was pushed back from the government residency with water cannon.

Tear gas and rubber bullets were also used in the course of those several days.

In the town of Zenica, rioters successfully set fire to another government building, chanting "Revolution!" and "Thieves!" Around 3,000 people were on the streets, leaving a total of 55 people injured, 23 of them police officers, AFP reported.

But the most violent clashes are occurring in the northern city of Tuzla, where, as of Friday 11 more people were injured, following Thursday's 130 people -- mostly police. Factory closures led to a quick surge in anti-government sentiment.

Another government building was set on fire, as several officials were seen escaping through the windows. The city is also suffering looting, with people emerging from municipal buildings and escaping with computers. There have also been attacks on supermarkets.

"I think this is a genuine Bosnian spring. We have nothing to lose. There will be more and more of us in the streets, there are around 550,000 unemployed people in Bosnia," as Reuters was told by Almir Arnaut, an unemployed economist and activist from Tuzla. Another, a construction worker, told AFP that "people are hungry."

The rapidly escalating situation has led to the chiefs of the regional Tuzla and Zenica government resigning. The chaos is unprecedented, given the common view that Serbs, Bosnians and Croats would rather risk political stagnation than ever returning to the kind of violence they saw during the Bosnian War of 1992-95.

"This is so sad," a woman standing by a burning government said. "It took four years of war to destroy it and vandals now burned it in one day. This is just as in 1992."

A wave of labor unrest swept across Europe on Wednesday, with workers coordinating across borders in hard-hit countries to protest years of narrowing prospects, shrinking wages and sky-high unemployment.

In what appeared to be the most coordinated pan-continental labor disruption since the euro crisis began more than three years ago, Spanish and Portuguese workers went on a general strike while Italian and Greek unions held part-day work stoppages. There was a limited strike in Belgium and small protests in richer nations across Europe.

But the protests seemed unlikely to disrupt what has become an almost unstoppable trend: grinding, painful austerity in the struggling southern European countries and limited prospects for the future. In Spain, many industrial workers were on strike. Italian unionists clashed with police. Transportation was hard hit in Portugal. In some countries, electricity consumption dropped noticeably as factories were idled.

The protests in Ukraine organized by USAID, National Endowment for Democracy (NED), Freedom House, George Soros' Open Society Institute and a host of public-private NGOs have turned violent.