ATHENS: The Greek parliament approved early Monday a deeply unpopular austerity bill to secure a second bailout from the European Union and International Monetary Fund and avoid a messy default.

Before the parliamentary vote, serious violence broke out on the streets Athens and spread to other Greek towns and cities, including on the holiday islands of Corfu and Crete.

The bill sets out 3.3 billion euros ($4.35 billion) in wage, pension and job cuts for this year alone.

Historic cinemas, cafes, shops and banks were set ablaze in central Athens Sunday as black-masked protesters fought Greek police outside parliament, while inside lawmakers looked set to defy the rage by endorsing a new EU/IMF austerity deal. State television reported that violence spread to the islands of Corfu and Crete, the northern city of Thessaloniki and towns in central Greece. Shops were being looted in the capital in the worst breakdown of order since 2008 when violence gripped Greece for weeks after police shot a 15-year-old schoolboy. A Reuters photographer saw buildings in Athens engulfed in flames and huge plumes of smoke rose in the night sky.

“We are facing destruction. Our country, our home, has become ripe for burning, the center of Athens is in flames. We cannot allow populism to burn our country down,” conservative MP Costis Hatzidakis told parliament ahead of the vote.

The air in Syntagma Square outside parliament was thick with tear gas as riot police fought with youths who smashed marble balustrades and hurled stones and petrol bombs.

Terrified Greeks and tourists fled the rock-strewn streets and the clouds of stinging gas, cramming into hotel lobbies for shelter as lines of riot police struggled to contain the mayhem.

State NET television reported that trouble had also broken out in Heraklion, capital of the tourist island of Crete, as well as the towns of Volos and Agrinio in central Greece.

Despite the chaos, Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos warned ahead of the vote that Greeks faced “unimaginably harsher” sacrifices if parliament rejected the package.

On the streets many businesses were ablaze, including the neo-classical home to the Attikon cinema dating from 1870 and a building housing the Asty, an underground cinema used by the Gestapo during World War II as a torture chamber.

As fighting raged for hours, protesters threw homemade bombs made from gas canisters as riot police advanced across the square on the crowds, firing tear gas and stun grenades.

Loud booms from the protests could be heard inside parliament.

After days of dire warnings and threats of rebellion, parliament voted in favor of the controversial bill in a late-night session that ran past midnight.

Venizelos told parliament ahead of the vote that the alternative to the international bailout – bankruptcy and a departure from the eurozone – would be far worse for Greeks.

“The choice is not between sacrifice and no sacrifices at all, but between sacrifices and unimaginably harsher ones,” he said.

Greece needs the international funds before March 20 to meet debt repayments of 14.5 billion euros.

Many Greeks believe their living standards are collapsing already and the new measures, which include a 22 percent cut in the minimum wage, will only deepen their misery.

“Enough is enough!” said 89-year-old Manolis Glezos, one of Greece’s most famous leftists. “They have no idea what an uprising by the Greek people means. And the Greek people, regardless of ideology, have risen.”