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Third French mayor bans burqini

Such an order has issued the mayor of the village of Sisco, he follows identical prohibitions in the Riviera towns of Cannes and Villeneuve-Loubet.

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The local mayor, Ange-Pierre Vivoni, told TF1 television some beach-goers of North African origin objected to having their pictures taken.

Police are still trying to establish how the incident turned into a riot, but local media said that a group of older North African men soon arrived, some armed with hatchets and harpoons, and took on the young Corsicans.

There were clashes and cars were set ablaze. Five people were hospitalised.

“I am absolutely not racist”.

“I want to say to our Muslim compatriots that we will be merciless in the face of those who would make them scapegoats and who see Islam as an ideal culprit for acts of terrorism”, Valls said.

Islamic State (Isil) extremists have cited these bans as one of their justifications for targeting France, which has been hit by a string of jihadist attacks over the last 19 months that have left the country on edge and fretting over home-grown religious extremism.

The public prosecutor has opened an inquiry into the cause of the brawl and for “gang violence”.

Vivoni said tensions over religion had been building in northern Corsica for a while.

On Sunday on Corsica island’s Bastia, about 200 Corsicans marched on the Lupino district, which has a large North African community, chanting, “This is our home”. Police blocked the protesters from entering the estate.

The mayor of the French island of Corsica has banned the burkini, becoming the third French region to do so.

The National Front seeks to maintain the secular values of French culture and is stridently anti-immigrant in its political platform.

The order has been slammed by anti-racism group SOS Racisme, which described the campaign as a “strategy of tension”.

The socialist government’s minister for women’s rights, Laurence Rossignol, told French daily Le Parisien: “It is not just the business of those women who wear it, because it is the symbol of a political project that is hostile to diversity and women’s emancipation”.

France remains in a state of emergency following multiple terror attacks, including the lorry massacre in Nice, the murder of a priest in Normandy and the Paris atrocity a year ago.

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On July 14, a Tunisian father of three plowed a truck into crowds celebrating Bastille Day, killing 85 people. A few days later, two teenagers killed an elderly priest in northern France.

Man harpooned during brawl over burkini beach photos