Excerpt:
Youths jeered and jostled France's interior minister on Tuesday in the northern city of Amiens when he promised to restore law and order at the scene of overnight riots in which police were fired at with buckshot and pelted with missiles.
President Francois Hollande said the state would "mobilize all its resources to combat this violence", which has shaken depressed quarters of major French cities at regular intervals over the past decade.
Police and emergency officials in Amiens were on high alert on Tuesday evening and some, speaking on condition of anonymity, said they feared a further flareup of violence.