Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption The BBC's Jon Sopel describes the battle between the police and rioters as one of "cat and mouse" 
 
 The Greek parliament has voted in favour of a drastic package of austerity measures intended to save the country from defaulting on its debts. 
 
 The proposed tax hikes and spending cuts have been deeply unpopular with the Greek public. 
 
 A nationwide 48-hour strike is under way and violent clashes are continuing in the streets of the capital, Athens. 
 
 The EU welcomed the bill's passage, by 155 votes to 138, as a "vote of national responsibility". 
 
 Greece is heavily in debt and the package is needed to win the latest tranche of a 110bn-euro (£98bn) loan from the EU and IMF. 
 
 Parliament will hold a second vote on Thursday aimed at reforming laws to allow the package to be implemented. 
 
 'No time to step back' 
 
 Ahead of Wednesday's vote, Prime Minister George Papandreou urged MPs to approve the package by consensus. 
 
 No one in Greece believes the tax increases, lay-offs, privatisations will ever be fully implemented. Greece vote won't end drama 
 
 He had faced wavering support from within his governing Panhellenic Socialist Movement (Pasok), which has a slim majority, with 155 seats out of 300 in parliament. 
 
 But in the end, only one Pasok deputy voted against the package. There were two abstentions, while five deputies merely noted they were present. 
 
 Mr Papandreou says his austerity plan is the only way to get Greece back on its feet. 
 
 "We must avoid the country's collapse at all costs. Now is not the time to step back," he told deputies. 
 
 Were his 28bn-euro austerity package to be rejected, Greece could run out of money within weeks, as the EU and the International Monetary Fund want the measures implemented before they release more funds to help Greece pay off its vast debts. 
 
 European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso and European Council President Herman Van Rompuy welcomed the result of Wednesday's vote, saying it had pulled Greece away from the "very grave scenario of default" while paving the way for a second aid package. 
 
 "The country has taken an important step forward along the necessary path of fiscal consolidation and growth-enhancing structural reform," they said in a joint statement. 
 
 'Unfair but necessary' 
 
 Once news that the vote had passed trickled out to the streets of Athens, fighting broke out with a new level of brutality, says the BBC's Malcolm Brabant in the Greek capital. 
 
 Greek tragedy Total Greek debt Greece is about to get a second bail-out from the EU, aimed at helping pay its debts until 2014. It also has to agree more cuts as part of the deal. The economy The Greek economy is in dire straits. Retail sales have fallen 18% since 2008 and manufacturing output has dropped 30% in the same period. Working population Greeks retire on average at 61. Tax evasion is widespread. Until 2010, public sector workers received two months extra pay a year in bonuses. EU demands To meet EU demands, Greece must sell 50bn euros-worth of public assets by 2014, equal to 20% of GDP. Public sector pay is being cut 15%. BACK {current} of {total} NEXT 
 
 The riot police engaged in behaviour that would never be tolerated in other parts of Europe, throwing stones back at the protesters, says our correspondent. 
 
 Police corralled demonstrators into the metro station outside parliament in Syntagma Square, and fired tear gas down the stairwells, he adds. 
 
 Meanwhile, protesters set fire to a post office on the ground floor of the finance ministry in the square. 
 
 The air outside parliament was thick with plumes of tear gas and smoke as clashes continued near the square between masked protesters - armed with rocks and sticks - and riot police firing tear gas and stun grenades. 
 
 Dozens of police and protesters were injured in the violence. 
 
 "Let the prime minister come down here and see if he can live on 300 euros a month," one female protester told the BBC outside parliament. 
 
 Greek unions are angry that the government's austerity programme will impose taxes on those earning the minimum wage, following months of other cuts that have seen unemployment rise to more than 16%. 
 
 The vote covered the first part of Greece's austerity package, focusing on raising taxes to secure some 14.09bn euros over the next five years and introducing 14.32bn euros in public spending cuts. 
 
 Ahead of Wednesday's vote, the governor of Greece's central bank, George Provopoulos, said a 'no' vote would be "suicide" for the country. 
 
 Thursday's vote is over the implementation of different parts of the package, such as tax rises and the sale of state assets. 
 
 Once passed, European officials will start to finalise the details of a second bail-out, worth an estimated 120bn euros, designed to help Greece pay its debts until the end of 2014. 
 
 The impact of the Greek vote would be felt worldwide said Herman Van Rompuy, president of the EU Commission, on Tuesday. 
 
 Recently appointed Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos acknowledged that the cuts were "unfair", though absolutely necessary. 
 
 But the main opposition leader, Antonis Samaras of the New Democracy party, said the thinking behind the austerity package was flawed, and that tax rates should be lowered rather than raised in order to stimulate the economy. ||||| ATHENS Greece's government voted by a razor thin margin on Thursday to approve an austerity package needed to unlock vital aid and avert bankruptcy, despite an internal rift and violent protests at the gates of parliament. 
 
 Lawmakers approved the spending cuts, tax hikes and measures making it easier to hire and fire workers after nearly 100,000 Greeks waving flags and chanting "Fight! They're drinking our blood!" descended on Syntagma Square in central Athens. 
 
 Despite the abstention of their junior ruling partner the Democratic Left, Prime Minister Antonis Samaras's New Democracy Party and its Socialist PASOK allies passed the 500-odd page bill shortly after midnight. 
 
 They mustered 153 of parliament's 300 seats, with New Democracy and PASOK expelling seven deputies from their ranks for not backing the measures. 
 
 Earlier in the evening, clashes erupted when a handful of protesters tried to break through a barricade to enter the assembly. Riot police responded with teargas, stun grenades and, for the first time in an anti-austerity protest here, water cannon. 
 
 There was also chaos inside the assembly, where parliamentary workers briefly stopped the session by walking out when they discovered their salaries would be cut. 
 
 The bill covering the bulk of 13.5 billion euros' ($17.2 billion) worth of belt-tightening measures is a precursor to the 2013 budget law, which the government is expected to push through on Sunday. 
 
 If it does, it is expected to unlock a 31.5 billion euro aid tranche from the International Monetary Fund and European Union that Greece needs to shore up its banks and pay off loans. 
 
 "We must now pass the budget and right after that work for the recovery of the economy," Samaras told Reuters after the vote. 
 
 The euro rose briefly to around $1.2780 from $1.2765 before the vote. 
 
 "We're seeing little bit of a bounce in the euro because the threat of a Greek exit from the euro zone is dissipating now that the Greeks have made the difficult decision to move forward with painful austerity measures," said Kathy Lien, managing director of BK Asset Management in New York. 
 
 ANGER, VIOLENCE 
 
 The vote came on the second day of a two-day national strike called by the country's two biggest unions, which halted public transport and shut schools, banks and government offices. Garbage piled up on the streets. 
 
 Backed by the leftist opposition, unions said the measures would hit the poor and spare the wealthy, while deepening a five-year recession that has wiped out a fifth of the country's output and driven unemployment to a record 25 percent. 
 
 Anger has also been growing at the relaxed approach consecutive governments have taken towards catching tax cheats, with many saying officials have dragged their feet on investigations to protect a wealthy elite. 
 
 "You live in constant fear and uncertainty. You never know what's waiting for you around the corner," said Panos Goutsis, 58, who works in a small corner shop in Athens. 
 
 "How many times will they tell us these are the last measures? We're sick of hearing it." 
 
 Outside parliament, loud booms rang out through the evening as hooded protesters wearing gas masks hurled molotov cocktails and rocks at police. Billowing smoke and small fires dotted the square and streets next to parliament. 
 
 At least 35 people were detained. There were no reports of serious injuries, police said. 
 
 "These measures are killing us little by little, and lawmakers in there don't give a damn," said Maria Aliferopoulou, a 52-year-old mother of two living on 1,000 euros a month. 
 
 "They are rich, they have everything, and we have nothing and are fighting for crumbs, for survival." 
 
 BALL IN EU COURT 
 
 Calm returned as protesters emptied the square during a steady downpour. The anti-austerity rally appeared to be the largest in Athens since summer last year. 
 
 Analysts said that if the government pushed through the budget on Sunday as expected, euro zone finance ministers could agree at a meeting in Brussels on Monday to let Greece push back its fiscal targets by two years to 2016 and ease austerity's grip on growth. 
 
 That, in turn, will allow the European Central Bank to also take measures to give Athens some slack, and the debate can then turn to ways of easing Greece's debt load, which is expected to peak at more than 190 percent of gross domestic product in 2014. 
 
 Eurasia Group analyst Mujtaba Rahman said Samaras's government had shown stronger will than any of its predecessors in pushing through the belt-tightening. 
 
 But a key question remains over whether the Mediterranean state, having failed to implement numerous austerity plans in the past, would be able to overcome intransigence in the country's institutions and put Wednesday's package into force. 
 
 "There is political will. The question is whether the bureaucracy has the capacity to implement reforms," Rahman said. 
 
 "Whether it can work is still an open question." 
 
 (Additional reporting by Karolina Tagaris, Renee Maltezou and Dina Kyriakidou; Writing by Michael Winfrey and Deepa Babington; Editing by Will Waterman) ||||| ATHENS — Parliament appeared close to approving and carrying out a set of unpopular austerity measures after a day of intense political maneuvering on Tuesday that seemed to bring wavering members of the ruling Socialist Party into line. 
 
 While the lawmakers debated, riot police clashed with protesters outside the Parliament building. Parliament must pass the measures — which include wage cuts, tax increases and privatizations in a recession-starved country — before Greece’s foreign lenders unlock the next installment of aid that the country needs to avoid default. 
 
 Prime Minister George A. Papandreou has a five-vote parliamentary majority as he tries to push through the austerity plan, which strikes at the heart of his Socialist Party base. The center-right New Democracy opposition party has struck a populist tone and opposes the measures, saying they offer too much austerity and not enough stimulus. 
 
 In the tense countdown ahead of the vote to approve the austerity package, which is scheduled for Wednesday, at least one member of Parliament from the Socialist Party who had opposed the bill changed his mind. 
 
 The lawmaker, Thomas Robopoulos, told state television on Tuesday that he would support the measures, “putting the national interest above everything else.” Earlier, Mr. Robopoulos had said he would decide “at the very last moment, after I have listened to all the speakers,” referring to the debate in Parliament. 
 
 “This is a crucial moment; if the memorandum does not pass we shall go bankrupt,” Mr. Robopoulos added. 
 
 He spoke after talks with the new finance minister, Evangelos Venizelos, a longtime Socialist who is regarded as being able to rally the party behind the measures, however unpopular. 
 
 The nation’s unions complicated matters on Tuesday when they began a 48-hour general strike — the first time they had walked out for more than 24 hours since democracy was restored to Greece in 1974 after a seven-year military dictatorship. 
 
 The protests in Syntagma Square in front of Parliament began peacefully but turned violent as groups of youths on the fringes began throwing rocks, firebombs and firecrackers. 
 
 The European Union, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund have said they will release $17 billion that Greece needs to pay its expenses through the summer if Parliament passes the measures. 
 
 “The only way to avoid immediate default is for Parliament to endorse the revised economic program,” said Olli Rehn, the European Union’s top economic and monetary affairs official. “Let me say this clearly: There is no Plan B to avoid default.” 
 
 In Brussels, European Union officials said they were working on contingency plans, including an effort to persuade the Greek opposition leader Antonis Samaras of the New Democracy Party to support the measures. 
 
 After the vote on the austerity measures, Parliament is scheduled on Thursday to consider a bill on how each of the measures will be carried out. Last year, Greece’s foreign lenders imposed austerity measures after they provided a first round of aid. 
 
 Since then, Greece has cut the wages of its 800,000 public workers — a quarter of the work force — by more than 10 percent. 
 
 The demonstration on Tuesday was one of the first in which labor unions joined with the younger demonstrators who have gathered in downtown Athens every night for the past month. Security forces fired tear gas to thin out the crowd, sending the demonstrators fleeing into side streets. 
 
 A police official said that 23 people were detained, with five later arrested, and that 21 officers were injured, none seriously. 
 
 Near Syntagma Square, a 40-year-old woman who gave her name only as Eirini, said she had been a secretary in a construction firm but had been out of work for more than five months. 
 
 “I’m here because we have nothing to lose,” she said, pushing down the surgical mask she used to filter out the tear gas. “We know very well that in six months, when they run out of money in the banks, we will be even more broke and hungry.” 
 
 She added, “I think that in one year, we are going to go to Syntagma, take out all the grass and plant tomatoes.”
– It’s official: Greece’s parliament has approved a wave of sweeping—and wildly unpopular—austerity measures, paving the way for it to receive bailout loans from Europe to avoid defaulting on its debt, the AP reports. The bill passed 155-138, garnering even the support of Alexandros Athanassiadis, a Socialist deputy who had promised to vote nay. The package will move the country roughly $40 million closer to the black with a mix of spending cuts and tax hikes. "We must avoid the country's collapse at all costs. Now is not the time to step back.," Prime Minister George Papandreou said ahead of the vote, according to the BBC. The head of the country's central bank had earlier today warned that a "no" vote would be "suicide" for the country. The euro rose 0.2% in the minutes following the news, the Wall Street Journal reports. Click for more on the riotous protests the bill has sparked in Athens.