By Renee Maltezou and Silvia Aloisi
ATHENS (Reuters) - A week of violence in Greece has taken its toll on the fragile conservative government, with opinion polls showing on Sunday that many think authorities mishandled the worst rioting in decades.
The December 6 killing of a 15-year-old teenager police unleashed a wave of unrest by thousands of students and anarchists across the country, feeding on growing anger over political scandals and the impact of a global recession on Greece's economy.
While the violence generally has subsided in the past few days, small groups of hooded youngsters with fire bombs are still rampaging at night in the capital, fighting running battles with riot police and smashing shops.
Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis has pledged to protect people and property, but he has drawn widespread criticism for not acting quickly and decisively to tackle the revolt.
An opinion poll published by Ethnos newspaper on Sunday said 83.3 percent of Greeks were unhappy with the government's response to the violence.
Discontent was high -- at 65.6 percent -- even among supporters of Karamanlis' New Democracy party, which has a one-seat majority in parliament and already lagged behind the Socialist opposition before the riots.
Another survey, in Kathimerini daily, put disapproval of the government at 68 percent with 60 percent of those polled saying the riots were a social uprising rather than an outburst by an isolated fringe of violent protesters.
More demonstrations are planned for Monday, including one outside the police headquarters in Athens.
NIGHT-TIME ATTACKS
Eight days of clashes have caused 200 million euros (177.5 million pounds) of damage in Athens alone. The city was calm on Sunday but broken shop windows bore witness to the latest, sporadic riots overnight, when a few hundred youths wearing gas masks attacked a government building, four shops and two banks.
"I'm tired of coming to the shop every night to check the damages. You think it's going to calm down and then it starts again," said Anna Pavlidou, manager of a central Athens mobile phone store that has been repeatedly attacked and looted.
"The government should assume its responsibilities and resign. It didn't handle it well. If it had, we wouldn't have 355 damaged shops in Athens. I mean, we won't be able to open until Christmas," she told Reuters.
"Someone has to understand the deeper reasons for this -- poverty, high unemployment -- and solve it radically."
The policeman charged with killing Alexandros Grigoropoulos has been jailed along with a colleague pending trial, while more than 400 protesters have been detained over the unrest.
In central Athens, where even in calmer times barely a week goes by without a demonstration, riot police with teargas canisters have been manning street corners at night, especially in the leftist Exarchia neighbourhood where the boy was shot.
But in a country where many have an instinctive disregard for authority and memories are still vivid of police heavy-handedness during the 1967-74 military rule, the government has been loath to take emergency security measures.
Nor has it tried to address the protesters' wider grievances about the slowing economy and political incompetence.
"Young people, like all Greeks, demand actions and not words ... The government is moving steadily on this difficult but responsible path," a government statement said late on Sunday, responding to new opposition calls for its resignation.
(Reporting by Renee Maltezou, writing by Silvia Aloisi; Editing by Michael Roddy)
