By Chuck Mikolajczak and Sinead Carew
NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. stocks fell sharply on Friday, leaving the benchmark S&P 500 with its worst weekly performance since May 2012, as investors pulled back from the markets in response to oil's free-fall and more weak data out of China.
The Dow Jones industrial average fell 315.51 points, or 1.79 percent, to 17,280.83, the S&P 500 lost 32.99 points, or 1.62 percent, to 2,002.34 and the Nasdaq Composite dropped 54.57 points, or 1.16 percent, to 4,653.60.
For the week the Dow fell 3.8 percent, its largest weekly drop since November 2011; the S&P lost 3.5 percent, the most for any week since May 2012, and the Nasdaq fell 2.7 percent.
(Reporting by Rodrigo Campos; Editing by James Dalgleish)
