Jakarta – Indonesian police fired teargas and beat up student protestors on Thursday near the house of former president Suharto, in the latest protest calling for him to be tried for corruption.

At least six students were arrested, two of them bleeding from the head, after violence broke out when the protestors threw at least six fuel bombs from the back row of the 300-strong group. The police threw the fuming fuel bombs back at the students who quickly dispersed. The police then chased the students, beating them up on the way.

The student protestors, carrying sharpened bamboo sticks, had earlier tried to march to the heavily guarded Cendana Street in the affluent Menteng area of central Jakarta where the 78-year-old Suharto lives.

The protesters got as close as 300 metres from Suharto's downtown Jakarta residence, before they were blocked by at least 200 policemen at a roundabout. About 20 students, some armed with sharpened sticks, later returned to the site, taunting the police and throwing another fuel bomb.

"Burn Cendana right now," they chanted as more than 100 members of the security forces, armed with batons and shields, watched them. "If we are not allowed to enter ... we will force" our way in, said one of the protestors, a student from the Institute for Social and Governing Sciences who gave his name only as Acil.

By nightfall all the students had left the area. "The police did not start it," said the head of the VIP security command, Lieutenant Colonel Said Aqil, later.

Aqil had told the students to appoint one of their representatives to enter Suharto's house, but the offer was rejected outright by the students, who all wanted to be allowed in.

Major Ricky Wakano, who heads the Central Jakarta police, had warned the students would have "to bear the consequences of your own action," if they persisted in trying to enter the residence.

Almost daily student protests – several of which have turned into violent clashes with troops – have taken place near Suharto's Cendana Street residence in recent weeks as students demand the former president be dragged to court and his assets confiscated for alleged corruption and abuse of power during his three decades in power.