Teen badly hurt in clashes sparked by identity check

French police vehicles are seen in Trappes, a suburb of Paris. Violent clashes erupted between citizens and French police late on Thursday after police officers carried out an identity check on a full-face veiled woman and her husband.

AFP/Reuters/Trappes, France

A 14-year-old boy has been seriously injured in clashes between police and protesters in the western suburbs of Paris after officers stopped a woman for wearing a veil.

The teenager suffered an eye injury after being shot in the face on Friday evening. It is not yet known who fired the shot.

The youth was in hospital yesterday. Several police offers were also injured.

Some 250 people who collected outside the Trappes police station on Friday night threw stones and other projectiles and destroyed property before being repelled by riot police in the early hours of Saturday, a police statement said.

A witness said the crowd called on police to release the man but were “insulted” by authorities.

“They (the police) didn’t want to listen and it got out of control,” the man, who gave his name as Sofiane, told iTele. “Trappes is a big family. When you attack us we’re going to respond.”

The 14-year-old was hurt during an “intense phase” of violence, official Erard Corbin de Mangoux said.

Trouble had started around 8.30pm and carried on sporadically through the night until 2am.

It had been sparked by an incident on Thursday when an officer stopped a woman wearing a veil.

During this, the woman’s husband attacked and apparently tried to strangle the officer, according to Versailles prosecutor Vincent Lesclous.

This version was disputed by the Collective against Islamophobia in France, who said trouble started after police “provocation”.

France introduced a law in April 2011 banning the wearing of full face veils in public places.

Since that time more than 700 inspections have been carried out by police.

Politicians and community leaders called for calm.

Interior Minister Manuel Valls, who was in Marseille, said: “To attack the police, institutions, public goods makes no sense, does not solve any problem and is unacceptable.”

The president of the Observatory against Islamophobia, Abdallah Zekri appealed for calm.

Six people were arrested after the overnight violence, French authorities said.

Police said order was restored by daybreak in Trappes, an area of grim housing estates, but that reinforcements sent in overnight would remain in coming hours to help ensure calm.

Authorities dealing with immigrant unrest fear a repeat of riots in 2005, France’s worst for 40 years, when nationwide violence led to the imposition of a state of emergency.

In Trappes, as cleanup crews cleared away shattered glass from bus shelters, burned trash bins and stones littering the pavement, the chief administrator of the department (county) of Yvelines described the suburb as “calm and serene”.

“We will maintain this calm in the coming hours,” prefect de Mangoux told journalists. “Police will stay put until we believe the threat is over.”