Rioters have shot at police during a wave of violence that swept part of the northern French town of Amiens.
Youths pulled drivers from their cars, stealing the vehicles, and burned a school and a youth centre. At least 16 officers were hurt by the time the riot ended.
At the height of the confrontation, 150 officers - both local and federal riot police - faced the rioters. There were no arrests.
"The confrontations were very, very violent," Amiens Mayor Gilles Dumailly said.
He said tensions had been building for weeks between police and locals, whom he described as "people who are in some difficulty."
Police in Amiens said the riot involved about a hundred young men and began around 9pm on Monday, ending around 4am after federal reinforcements arrived. It was not clear what caused the unrest, but there had been smaller confrontations with police over the past week, including one involving a weekend traffic stop that some local residents thought was unnecessarily violent.
Previous violence in Amiens had been on a smaller scale. By the time the latest confrontation was over, two school buildings had been burned, along with a dozen cars and rubbish bins were used as...
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