Four more cars were torched in Ede on Friday night as unrest in the Gelderland town continued.

The fire brigade was alerted to the fires around 02.15am and it took about an hour to put out the flames. The windows in one nearby house and a garage were damaged by the heat, news agency ANP said.

For over a week, a group of some 50 youngsters, mainly of Moroccan descent, have been setting fires and damaging property in the nearby De Lindenhorst shopping centre which has been closed for demolition.

The trouble started after a café the youths used to hang out in was shut because of the demolition plans.

Mosque

On Friday it emerged that the Moroccan consult general to the Netherlands has been drafted in to try to restore order. The mayor has introduced a local bylaw to stop groups of youths hanging around in parts of the town and a protest march calling for calm has been organised by the local mosque for Sunday.

The local Christian Democratic party has taken a pragmatic approach to the decision to involve the consul, broadcaster Nos said on Saturday.

‘If someone with authority, and that is the consul, wants to contribute to solving the problem by talking, then they are sincerely welcome,’ local leader Jan Pieter van der Schans said.

The CDA is part of the district’s coalition council along with four other parties. The biggest party in Ede, with seven council seats, is the fundamentalist Christian group SGP but its support is mainly in the outlying Bible belt villages.

Discretion

However, local interest party Gemeentebelangen, which is also part of the coalition, has criticised the involvement of an outsider. Leader Peter de Pater said the involvement of the consul should have been kept quiet.

‘Before you know it, we’ll have a discussion about outside influence and loyalty,’ he told Nos.

Ede is a small town with a population of around 65,000. Its economy has been hit by the closure of several nearby army bases and factories and it is increasingly focusing on tourism to the nearby Veluwe heath region as an income source.