France steps up Bastille Day security after recent riots

France will mobilise 130,000 police officers for the country's annual July 14 Bastille Day national festival after the country was hit by riots following the deadly police shooting of a teenager near Paris.

Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin told reporters on Wednesday that the police officers would be mobilised from Thursday evening onwards.

Helicopters and special police units such as the RAID and GIGN divisions would also be on standby, he added.

Riots broke out at the end of June after police shot dead Nahel, a 17-year-old of Algerian and Moroccan descent, when the youth did not comply with an order to stop his car.

Protests over his death started in the Paris suburb of Nanterre, where he was shot, then spread rapidly to other major cities such as Lyon and Marseille.

The riots have since subsided but police fear unrest on the evening of the July 14 public holiday known as Bastille Day, which commemorates the 1789 storming of the Bastille prison and is a key date in the French Revolution.