Angry youths fought running battles with police for a second night in a row in neighbourhoods outside Paris, injuring more than 77 police officers following the death of two teens killed in a crash with a police patrol car.

Riot police face young residents of Villiers-le-Bel, a northern Paris suburb, while a garbage truck burns in the background during clashes late Monday.
(Thibault Camus/Associated Press)

The violence late Monday and early Tuesday was more intense than during three weeks of rioting in 2005, said senior police union official Patrice Ribeiro. He said officers were shot at and are facing "genuine urban guerrillas with conventional weapons and hunting weapons."

Some officers were hit by shotgun pellets, Interior Minister Michele Alliot-Marie said. She said there were six serious injuries, "people who notably were struck in the face and close to the eyes."

The BBC reported five of the injured officers are said to be in critical condition.

The riots were triggered by the deaths of a 15-year-old and a 16-year-old killed in a crash with a police patrol car on Sunday in Villiers-le-Bel, a town of public housing blocks home to a mix of Arab, black and white residents in Paris' northern suburbs.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has appealed for calm while police braced for more problems.

The suburbs are dominated by African and Arab immigrants and their French-born children who complain of high unemployment and racial discrimination.

The scene of destruction was all too reminiscent of two years ago in the impoverished area, when some of the worst violence in France's history occurred in the wake of the deaths of two teenagers in an electrical substation following a police chase.

In the violence that consumed the neighbourhoods for weeks, rioters targeted schools, hospitals, buses and cars, leaving a wake of immense material destruction that prompted authorities to declare a state of emergency and impose curfews.

With files from the Associated Press