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R/€ 
R/£ New Year's Eve car burnings up in France
January 02, 2009 Edition 1
PARIS: At least 445 cars were torched during the night of New Year's Eve in France, a 20% rise on last year.
Car burnings are regular occurrences in France, but registering the New Year's Eve total has become something of a tradition since it achieved symbolic status in the violent rioting that shook many of the country's poor suburbs in 2005.
With riots in Athens last month heightening worries that the economic crisis might spark a resurgence of the violence seen in France's run-down "banlieues" in 2005, 35 000 police officers were mobilised on New Year's Eve, 7 000 more than last year.
Officials were also on guard against possible attacks after five sticks of dynamite were left in a Paris department store just before Christmas by a so-far unidentified group demanding the withdrawal of French troops from Afghanistan.
A French interior ministry official said that as of 7am, 445 car burnings had been registered, against 372 last year. The police had made 288 arrests, compared with 259 on December 31 2007.
Meanwhile, in Italy, stray bullets claimed the life of one person in Naples and wounded three others in separate incidents in northern Milan as revellers fired guns into the air to mark the new year. - Reuters -Sapa-AFP
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