Reuters reports the claim by the French Interior Ministry that 1147 cars were torched over the New Year's holiday. The overwhelming majority of this violence took place in the poor immigrant "banlieues" or suburbs that surround its cities.
As ususal, Reuters carefully omits mentioning that these banlieues are overwhelmingly Moslem, and that many are "no go" places for French police. Moslem immigrants now make up perhaps 10% of the French population, and are largely unassimilated into French society.
They constitute a problem that French politicians keep kicking down the road, hoping against all evidence that it will go away. If the current world-wide economic crisis is bad enough, perhaps it will "go away" to some degree. At least the U.S. is currently seeing some reverse migration attributed to hard times among its illegal immigrant population.
