Up to 300 soldiers will be deployed around France to beef up security after three separate incidents in as many days left one person dead and more than 20 people injured, including three police officers.
Patrols by police and gendarmes will also be stepped up in areas where the public is deemed to be at risk.
France’s prime minister, Manuel Valls, announced the deployment after a crisis meeting at Matignon, his official residence.
The decision came shortly after the French president, François Hollande, announced that one victim of an attack on Monday evening, in which a man drove into a crowd of shoppers at a Christmas market in Nantes, had died. Nine other Christmas shoppers were injured.
Valls and the French interior minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, went to Nantes on Tuesday afternoon to support the victims.
“The number of patrols will be increased during this period. Between 200 and 300 soldiers will be deployed in the coming hours,” Valls said.
“Patrols by police and gendarmes will concentrate on areas where there are a lot of people: shopping areas, city and town centres, stations and transport networks.”
France’s authorities said the three attacks did not seem to be connected, and only one has been linked to a suspected Islamic fundamentalist.
Earlier on Tuesday, Valls called for “composure and vigilance”, adding he understood the “very real and legitimate concerns” caused by the incidents.
“In a great democracy like ours, the best response is to continue to get on with our lives calmly. The words vigilance and unity must be the order of the day,” Valls told Europe 1 radio.
“We should not underestimate these acts,” he added. “In moments of crisis, there shouldn’t be arguments about what is the most appropriate response.”
The van driver who ploughed into the Christmas market in Nantes, western France, on Monday evening was described by police as having psychological and family difficulties.
The man, 37, deliberately steered a white Peugeot van into shoppers enjoying mulled wine at the market, in a pedestrian area of the city.
He then pulled out a knife and stabbed himself several times in the chest. After he was taken to hospital, where his condition was described on Tuesday as serious but not life-threatening, investigators said they found a notebook containing confused ramblings suggesting he had psychological difficulties. The assailant had a criminal record for a theft in 2006 and vandalising a vehicle in 2008, according to police sources.
“We cannot speak of an act of terrorism,” Brigitte Lamy, the Nantes public prosecutor, told journalists. “It appears to be an isolated case.” She added that there had been no religious or other claims made. “We need to verify this, but it appears to be the same kind of attack as that which took place in Dijon.”
Lamy was referring to an incident on Sunday, when a 40-year-old man drove into a group of pedestrians, injuring 11 people. The man was later found to have been admitted to a psychiatric hospital on more than 150 occasions. It came a day after a former rapper from Burundi, who had converted to Islam, attacked police officers with a knife, allegedly crying “Allahu Akbar”, before he was shot dead in Joué-lès-Tours.
Hollande, who is visiting the French overseas territory of Saint Pierre et Miquelon, an island in the Atlantic, had ordered Valls to organise the emergency meeting of the interior, justice, defence and social affairs ministers. They were joined by the chiefs of the gendarmerie and national police service.
Hollande told reporters: “We cannot give in to panic, to confusion, to fear.”
