The USTKE, who represent the indigenous Kanak population, blockaded industrial zones in New Caledonia, a French overseas territory in the Pacific Ocean, in the latest stage of a increasingly tense strike which has been playing out for the past week.

Law enforcement officials stepped in to allow access to several commercial concerns in the Ducos industrial zone, north of the capital Noumea, and the clashes that followed led to the arrests.

The republic's high commissariat, Yves Dassonville, reported that armed protesters also blocked the entrances to local branch offices of businesses in Piondimie on the eastern shore.

Dassonville went on to say in a statement that he "deplored the repeat occurrence of this type of illegal strike."