France to step up security measures for New Year's celebrations

PARIS (Reuters) - France will have large numbers of police and soldiers deployed for this weekend's New Year's celebrations due to the 'very high' terrorist threat facing the country, Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said on Friday.

Darmanin said there would be around 90,000 police deployed across France, with 6,000 of them in Paris. There would also be 5,000 soldiers deployed from the 'Sentinelle' unit, set up to deal with terrorist threats.

"I have called for an extremely high turnout of police and security forces given the context of the very high terrorist threat due to, clearly, what is happening in Israel and in Palestine," Darmanin told reporters.

European security officials have stated that there is a growing risk of attacks by Islamists radicalised by the Israel-Hamas war.