French police fired teargas and stun grenades and were pelted with stones during a dawn swoop to clear eco-activists and anarchists from a site in western France that had been planned as a new airport.

The site in Notre-Dame-des-Landes had been squatted for years by opponents of the plan to build a 580-million-euro ($710 million) airport which the government decided to drop in January.

Some 2,500 police took part in the evacuation which authorities said started at 6 a.m. (0400 GMT). Police had already blocked surrounding roads as early at 3:30 a.m., according to a  Reuters report,  while protesters set fire to barricades.

One police officer sustained an eye injury and a protester was arrested, according to the French police.

Plans for a "Great West" trans-Atlantic gateway to France and Europe were first considered in the 1960s and the Notre-Dame-des-Landes site was identified in 1967, but the project stalled until being revived in 2000.

Supporters of the airport plan, designed to handle 4 million passengers a year initially, said it would have helped economic development in the Loire-Atlantique region. 

But opponents said it was too costly, environmentally damaging and that there was another under-utilised airport 110 km  to the north, near Rennes in Brittany.