A court has halted the clearing of a slum in France's department of Mayotte in the Indian Ocean, blocking efforts by the government to improve security, reports RFI.
Police have clashed with local youth, leading security forces to describe a "climate of insurrection".
France is caught between a rock and a hard place on Mayotte, the only of the four Comoros islands that remains French.
Crime is rampant, with more than 400 police investigations of murder, armed robbery and car theft in the past year, out of a population estimated at 350,000.
Only half the island's residents are French nationals, according to official statistics. The vast majority of the others are illegal arrivals from the neighbouring Republic of Comoros, made up of Grande Comore, Mohéli and Anjouan islands. They chose independence from France in a 1974 referendum.
Without papers and extremely poor, Comorians in Mayotte are forced to live in slums on the outskirts of towns and cities. They are blamed for practically all crime on the island.