France has called up 12,000 police reservists to help boost security after Thursday’s attack in Nice in which more than 80 people were killed.
Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve also appealed to “all willing French patriots” to sign up as reservists, to help protect the country’s borders.
Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel drove a lorry along the seafront through crowds before police shot him dead, BBC reports.
The self-styled Islamic State terrorist group claimed one of its followers carried out the attack.
A news agency linked to the group, Amaq Agency, said: “He did the attack in response to calls to target the citizens of the coalition that is fighting the Islamic State.”
Five people believed to be linked to Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, including his estranged wife, are in police custody, the Paris prosecutor’s office said.
France, which on Saturday began three days of mourning, already has 120,000 police and military deployed around the country. Its 12,000 reservists are made up of 9,000 military police officers and a further 3,000 regular police officers.
“I want to call on all French patriots who wish to do so, to join this operational reserve,” Cazeneuve said.
Some 30,000 people were on the Promenade des Anglais at the time of the attack on Thursday night.
Of the 84 who died, 10 were children. A total of 303 people had been taken into hospital following the attacks, the French Health Department confirmed on Saturday. Of those, 121 remain in hospital, 30 of whom are children, and 26 people are still in intensive care, including five children.
Residents of Nice and foreign tourists were killed. As well as France, the dead included nationals of Algeria, Germany, Tunisia, Switzerland, the US, Ukraine, Armenia, Russia, Morocco, Madagascar and Poland.
