The narrow sidestreet was in darkness and littered with broken glass and burnt debris when suddenly a panicky voice called out in the gloom "run,run run!" and young men scattered in all directions as riot police charged, their silhouettes caught in the flames of a shower of Molotov cocktails.

The students had reason to run. The baton-wielding police were lashing out, tired with a fourth night of rioting on the streets of the Greek capital. The riots were sparked by the shooting dead of 15-year-old Alexandros Grigoropoulos by police but symptomatic of a wider discontent with the government and other examples of police brutality. The fighting was happening in the student quarter around the National Archaeological Museum. A mile away, a 27-year-old waitress had joined a peaceful protest outside the parliament building. Declining to be named, she told me she had been demonstrating since the trouble began because she was "fed up with life here".

"I have two degrees but I am a waitress. There is no opportunity for young people here any more but I don't think this is confined to Greece. The economic situation leaves a lot of young people across Europe feeling bleak and hopeless."

As she finished speaking a round of sarcastic applause broke out among the crowd, greeting the "changing of the guard" of police outside the seat of Greece's increasingly unpopular government.

Back near the museum, the students regrouped for another attack, hurling more petrol bombs and fireworks. The police, wearing helmets and carrying riot shields, advanced again, this time in respirators as teargas filled the streets, tearing at the eyes and lungs of the students and those of us who watched, sheltering in the doorways of smashed and looted shops. Police cordoned off streets and redirected traffic away from the trouble spots, but the city was noticeably empty anyway last night as more trouble had been predicted after the funeral earlier in the day of the young victim. Greeks are still angry at a savage beating given to a student by seven officers three years ago. No officer has been charged with the assault, which left the boy in hospital for three months. The students showed no signs of easing their demonstrations last night, but as the waitress moved off into the night she predicted they would end soon.

"The weather is changing. It's getting colder. That will finish it sooner than the police can," she said