Police hurt in standoff with locals north of Paris

Angry crowds took potshots at police, slightly injuring six, in an overnight standoff over the death of a young man at a police station in the Val d'Oise area north of Paris, a local official said on Wednesday.

"About a hundred individuals ... came looking for the law enforcement forces after a person died at the premises of the gendarmerie in Beaumont (town)," Jean-Simon Merandat, director of the Val d'Oise prefect's office, told France Info radio.

"Things are calm now and we have about 130 gendarmes and other police on the spot. We have six officers injured, thankfully lightly, by this buckshot weapon, which is unacceptable," he said.

France is on tenterhooks after last week's attack in which a man ran a truck into crowds of Bastille Day holiday revellers in the Riviera coastal city of Nice.

The Val d'Oise showdown appeared however to be unrelated and triggered by a death in police hands that fired up tension among local people.