SHOCKING footage shows French schoolboys firing fireworks at riot police in a row over Islamic dress.
The black-clad pupils can be seen aiming firework mortars at officers and firing them across a road near a school.
The violence erupted after the head teacher of a school in the Paris suburb of Nanterre banned abayas, full body robes usually worn with a head scarf.
The row began at the beginning of the school year when around a dozen girls tried to enter the Joliot-Curie high school wearing religious clothes.
Fourteen pupils were detained after trying to blockade the school.
“Girls started to wear loose outfits and they weren't allowed," one pupil, Camille, told Le Figaro.
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“There was an altercation between a teacher and a student who came in an abaya. Everyone was shocked.”
Images of the black-clad boys prompted the President of the Île-de-France region Valérie Pecresse to say she was “extremely concerned about the escalation of violence” and to call for “calm”.
Under French law, such religious symbols are banned in schools in a bid to prevent pupils wearing full veils in a bid to promote secular values.
The beginning of the school week saw fresh clashes near the Joliot-Curie high school on Monday, Le Parisien reports.
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Video shows around half a dozen officers holding up riot shields beating a hasty retreat in the face of the barrage, as the explosions go off in front of them.
The boys continue to fire in the direction of where the officers were standing as smoke billows across the street.
The clashes lasted around an hour with three of the youths eventually arrested.
One teacher told Le Figaro “there are young people from the surrounding suburbs who are taking advantage of the situation”.
The rules have led to resentment among many in the country’s six million Muslims.
The situation has been made worse by a lack of clarity about what constitutes a religious symbol with some schools allowing abayas and their male equivalent, the thawb, and others banning them.
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It comes as France’s education minister, Pap Ndiaye, who claimed that Islamist influencers are using platforms to encourage girls to wear abayas and thawbs.
“We are going to do what is necessary to limit the harmful influence of these Islamist agitators. The Republic is stronger than TikTok,” he said.
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