Live Updates: France Deploys Vast Security Force in Effort to Prevent More Riots

JUST IN: France deploys about 70,000 police and security officers ahead of mass protests, aiming to prevent the arson and looting that shocked the country last weekend.

France has put seventy thousand police and security officers on its streets today.

That is the scale of force the government believes it needs to keep this weekend from repeating the last one, when arson and looting swept through cities and shocked the country. These pictures show the deployment overnight, officers and vehicles holding wet streets before the crowds arrive.

Mass protests are expected again today, and the posture is visible everywhere. Riot police lined up along avenues, ready before anyone has gathered. Seventy thousand officers is not routine policing, it is close to a national mobilisation, and it tells you how seriously Paris is taking the risk of another weekend of fires.

The hardest fact is this. A government does not deploy a force that size unless it expects trouble. France is braced, and by tonight we will know whether the show of strength was enough.

This is Liu Yang, reporting for HIT.