PARIS (AFP, REUTERS) - Police fought running battles overnight in Paris's low-income northern suburbs with residents alleging heavy-handedness by officers enforcing France's strict coronavirus lockdown.

Residents burned trash and cars and shot fireworks at police, who responded with rubber bullets and tear gas in the suburbs of Villeneuve-la-Garenne and Aulnay-sous-Bois, witnesses and police said on Monday (April 20).

The tensions were ignited in the early hours of Saturday after a motorcyclist collided with the open door of an unmarked police car during a police check in Villeneuve-la-Garenne, prompting about 50 angry bystanders to gather to protest.

The skirmishes lasted into the early hours of Sunday before calm was restored.

A police statement said the group targeted officers with "projectiles" in a near two-hour standoff.

The motorcyclist, 30, was hospitalised with a broken leg and had to undergo surgery after he had crashed into the open door of the police car.

Residents alleged the door was opened deliberately so that the rider would smash into it.

The man will lodge a complaint against the officers, his family and a lawyer told AFP, while prosecutors have opened an investigation.

Police said they had wanted to stop the motorcyclist in Villeneuve-La-Garenne after he was seen riding at speed the wrong way down a street without a helmet.

By Monday morning, calm had returned to Villeneuve-la-Garenne after a second night of riots marked by suburban fires and explosions, an AFP journalist observed.

The trouble had also spread to nearby Aulnay-sous-Bois, where police claimed they were "ambushed" by residents in a district of dense, high-rise social housing of mainly immigrant occupants who claim they are regularly the victims of harsh police treatment.

Police said they were targeted by residents using fireworks as projectiles. Four were arrested.

Mediators have been sent into the neighbourhood to soothe tensions, police said.

France's banlieues - high-rise neighbourhoods that ring many of its cities - have long been flashpoints of anger over social and economic grievances.

In 2005, unrest lasted three weeks after two youths died fleeing police in a northern Paris suburb.

The capital's poor, ethnically diverse outskirts appear to have been hit harder by the coronavirus outbreak than more affluent central Paris, official data showing Covid-19-related deaths indicates.

After President Emmanuel Macron imposed a virtual lockdown on March 17, police officers privately expressed concerns that tough restrictions on public life could amplify tensions and spark unrest.

Some residents of public housing have complained of being unfairly targeted and of heavy-handed policing.

'CONFINEMENT AND TENSIONS'

After the motorcyclist was injured on Saturday, rights group SOS Racisme issued a statement calling on the authorities to shed full light on the incident, and urging police restraint "in this time of confinement and tensions".

Earlier this month, prosecutors opened an investigation into the death of a 33-year-old man in detention arrested for allegedly violating the home confinement measures imposed by the government to curb the spread of the coronavirus.

Police said the man resisted arrest. According to his sister, he had suffered from schizophrenia.

Prime Minister Edouard Philippe said Sunday police had carried out 13.5 million checks since the lockdown, with people allowed outside only for essential purposes, and then with a self-certified letter explaining their reasons for leaving their home.

More than 800,000 people were written up for violations.

Several complaints of brutality were lodged against French police during recent months of pension reform protests and "yellow vest" anti-government rallies.