MARSEILLE, France (Reuters) - City cleaners are spraying streets in the French port of Marseille with lemon grass per-fume to get rid of the stench from piles of rubbish that have been fes-tering under a hot sun for two weeks. Refuse collectors returned to work Tuesday after a 14-day strike over pension reforms, and city cleaners were battling to clear up an estimated 8,000 tonnes of garbage whose stench has attracted rats in droves.

　　"It's been awful. The smell has been unbearable and the streets were disgusting with rotting rubbish strewn all over them. Life hasn't been very easy," said a spokeswom-an at the municipal services depart-ment.

　　Residents of Marseille, swelter-ingly hot this month, grew so furi-ous at the inescapable pong that they set rubbish heaps ablaze, keeping firemen working round the clock.

　　France has been hit by a wave of public-sector strikes this month over the centre-right government's plans to make people work longer before they can claim a state pen-sion.