BRUSSELS, Dec 2: Tensions are still running high in Belgium’s port city of Antwerp after a 66-year-old Belgian man shot dead a young Moroccan last week in what police says was a deadly squabble between neighbours but the city’s North African community insists was a racist crime.

Following two days of rioting by angry North African youths, Antwerp police have arrested the Belgian man accused of the murder but also a local Arab leader charged with inciting hatred between the city’s Muslim and Belgian communities.

The outburst of violence on the streets of Belgium’s second largest city following the murder of 27-year-old Mohammed Achrak has shocked the country’s leaders into taking a closer look at the complex politics of Antwerp as well as the new phenomenon of an increasingly assertive Arab-Belgian community, unwilling to follow the quiet, self-effacing and reclusive lifestyle of the first generation of Moroccan immigrants in the country.

The inter-racial relations have always been tense in Antwer,. the once-affluent city is home to about 30,000 residents of Arab descent.

Belgian media are also transfixed by the personality of Dyab Abou Jahjah, leader of the local Arab European League, who was also taken into police custody following the race riots. Little known outside Antwerp, Jahjah’s group of self-declared vigilantes shot into prominence last week after they started patrolling the streets of the city with video cameras in a bid to record the police’s ‘manhunt’ of the city’s Moroccan youth.

The Lebanese-born Jahjah, seen as a local hero by many young Arabs, is accused by the Antwerp authorities of breaking Belgian law by organising a private militia.

Initially reluctant to spotlight the political implications of the crime and the subsequent riots, Belgian politicians are finally beginning to acknowledge the need to listen to the country’s Muslim minority community and admit they must work harder to integrate an increasingly disaffected Arab youth.