French PM deplores Corsica unrest

Offices were damaged and nationalists are suspected of arson

French Prime Minister Francois Fillon has condemned the actions of Corsican nationalists after seeing the island's fire-damaged parliament building.

He said the nationalists' actions were "delinquent" and "indescribable".

Several offices were damaged at the parliament in Ajaccio on Saturday, after nationalist demonstrators had broken into the building.

The office of regional council chairman Ange Santini was gutted. No-one was hurt and the fire was quickly put out.

Prime Minister Fillon, quoted by the French news agency AFP, vowed that those responsible would face justice.

On Saturday night shots were fired at the facade of the main justice building in Ajaccio.

A small explosion also occurred on Saturday at an army office in the northern city of Bastia - again without causing casualties.

Corsica has been the scene of a campaign of generally low-level separatist violence for three decades.

French politicians - including Corsicans - condemned the occupation of the parliament building and the fire, believed to have been started deliberately.

But the nationalist Corsica Nazione Indipendente (CNI) party did not condemn the incident, the French news agency AFP reports.

Earlier in the day, several hundred nationalists had staged a peaceful protest in Ajaccio's streets against French "repression".

Mr Santini also denounced "the attack carried out against democracy," saying "others probably haven't accepted the verdict of the ballot boxes".

Most of the 51 deputies in the regional parliament issued a statement calling Saturday's incident "a serious attack on democracy". But eight deputies who are in a coalition of nationalists abstained from it.