Vandals have burnt 1,137 cars in France on New Year's Eve, hundreds of people have been arrested.
Interior Minister Brice Hortefeux has said that the official toll for car burnings a traditional act of New Year mischief in France is almost as high as last year when 1,147 torched cars were counted.
Interior Minister Brice Hortefeux said in a statement that 405 arrests were made across the country and 11 police officers injured but ‘no major incidents’ were reported.
8,000 police were in the capital and 45,000 nationally for the night, after authorities counted 1,147 cars set on fire a year ago.
Glass bottles were prohibited at the celebrations in central Paris and customers banned from filling portable containers at petrol pumps.
In the eastern city of Strasbourg, known as a hotspot for car burning at New Year, media said about 70 vehicles had been set on fire.
Police in the Hauts-de-Seine district near Paris reported that 32 cars had been burnt.
171 arrests were made in the capital, mainly for burning cars and throwing objects at officers, but no major clashes with police were reported.
Also on New Year's Eve, a fire caused by an electrical accident in an apartment in the southern French city of Nimes killed five people and left 13 others injured.
In a separate incident 65 people were harmed by carbon monoxide fumes from a faulty heater at a party in a suburb of Paris.
