PARIS (Reuters) - Protestors in the northern Corsican town of Bastia attacked public buildings and threw projectiles at police on Sunday in the latest demonstration over an attack on a jailed nationalist at a mainland French prison.

       A protest that gathered 7,000 people in mid-afternoon turned violent as around 300 hooded individuals used Molotov cocktails and other projectiles to target police and state institutions, setting fire to a public tax office, the local prefecture said in a statement.

       There were 38 injured in the ongoing clashes, including 24 police officers, the prefecture said in an update at 8 p.m. local time (1900 GMT).

       There have been a number of demonstrations on the island of Corsica in the past week, including some clashes with police, in outrage over the strangling of Yvan Colonna by a fellow inmate at a prison in southern France.

       The attack left the Corsican militant in a coma and led to renewed calls for nationalist prisoners to be transferred from the French mainland to the island. [L5N2V62VV]

       Colonna is serving a life sentence for the 1998 murder of Claude Erignac, who as prefect of Corsica embodied the power of the French state on an island with a history of separatist violence.

       (Reporting by Gus Trompiz)