About 150 masked youths brandishing sticks and baseball bats clashed with the police late Monday night and early Tuesday in two suburbs east of Paris, the worst such violence since the unrest that reverberated through France in November, reports The New York Times.



Bands of youths attacked the home of the mayor of Montfermeil, a suburb with large populations of Arab and African Muslim immigrants east of Paris, then moved on to the local city hall. There were also clashes with the police in Clichy-sous-Bois, the grim suburb where last fall’s unrest began. The latest clashes seemed to echo that three-week wave of urban violence.



The violence was set off by the arrest on Monday afternoon of a local youth accused of assaulting a bus driver. The mayor had intervened in the assault and later identified some of suspects, who then retaliated against his home.



Montfermeil and Clichy-sous-Bois were among the many working-class Paris suburbs that were engulfed in the wave of unrest in November which began after the accidental deaths of two youths in Clichy-sous-Bois and was followed by rioting across the country in which thousands of cars were burned and dozens of public buildings damaged.



Unemployment, as high as 40 percent among the young, and a sense of hopelessness pervades what many consider to be ghettos for sub-Saharan and North African immigrants. Despite government measures to alleviate joblessness among the young, not much has changed since November.



Early Tuesday morning, the fighting between youths and the police spilled into public housing projects in Clichy-sous-Bois, which is next to Montfermeil. Five cars were set on fire.