PARIS (REUTERS) - Angry crowds took potshots at the police, slightly injuring six, in an overnight stand-off over the death of a young man at a police station in the Val d'Oise area north of Paris, a local official said on Wednesday (July 20).

"About a hundred individuals... came looking for the law enforcement forces after a person died at the premises of the gendarmerie in Beaumont (town)," Mr Jean-Simon Merandat, director of the Val d'Oise prefect's office, told France Info radio.

Six police were hurt by buckshot from what were "probably hunting weapons", the official said. "Things are calm now and we have about 130 gendarmes and other police on the spot. We have six officers injured, thankfully lightly, by this buckshot weapon, which is unacceptable," he said.

France is on tenterhooks after last week's attack in which a man ran a truck into crowds of Bastille Day holiday revellers in the Riviera coastal city of Nice.

The Val d'Oise showdown appeared, however, to be unrelated and triggered by a death in police hands that fired up tension among local people.