Rioters burned dozens of cars and set fire to a nursery school in the poor northern suburbs of Paris in the latest night of unrest sparked by the arrest of a young black man by officers who have since been charged with beating and raping him.

Police arrested 17 people in the disturbances that hit several different areas in the same suburbs where riots by disgruntled youths of immigrant origin began in 2005 and spread across the country.

President François Hollande on Tuesday evening went to visit the young man who is recovering in hospital after his allegedly violent arrest last Thursday in Aulnay-sous-Bois, and stayed for half an hour at his bedside.