The incident came after the mayor of Cannes banned women from wearing the full-body, head-covering swimsuits on the beaches of the town.
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A girl who witnessed the altercation told a slightly different version of the story: Three men started arguing with a tourist they accused of taking pictures of the women in burkinis.
Stones and bottles were reportedly thrown at the North Africans and three of their vehicles were burned. About 100 police officers rushed to the scene.
The Corsica Burkini ban will be officially recorded on Tuesday at the prefecture of the town, said Ange-Pierre Vivoni, the socialist mayor of Sisco, who claims to be following the examples of two other mayors who have taken similar measures, including the mayor of the city of Cannes.
“This case, which has become political, will likely have serious consequences by antagonizing the public debate and turning communities against each other, at a time when we dearly need unity”, the CCIF said in a statement.
Following the recent Bastille Day attack in Nice in which 85 people were killed, Corsican separatist threatened violent reprisals if Islamic extremists launched an attack on the Medittarranean island.
Valls backed the ban on burkinis saying he encouraged people “to live together and not with ulterior political motives”.
The clashes have highlighted deep tensions on Corsica over people of north African origin.
A series of terror attacks by Islamic fundamentalists have left France in a state of heightened tension.
In fact, the Collective against Islamophobia in France (CCIF) has filed a complaint against the bans with France’s highest administrative court, the Conseil d’Etat, which is expected to rule in the coming days.
But Rim-Sarah Alouane, a religious freedom expert at the University of Toulouse, says the anti-burkini brigade is relying on outdated ideas about Islam to stigmatise France’s second most widespread religion.
Scuffles with the police occurred and some of the crowd chanted, “This is our home”, French daily newspaper Le Monde reports.
Villeneuve-Loubet mayor Lionnel Luca, member of the hardline Droite Populaire faction of the conservative Les Republicains party, said the burkini was an ideological provocation.
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France has some of the toughest legislation on headscarves in Europe, including a law passed in 2004 on religious symbols that bans girls from wearing the hijab in state schools, but no current laws ban anyone from wearing a headscarf or full-body bikini at a public beach.
