President Emmanuel Macron is battling to contain a mounting crisis after riots spread across France overnight, set off by the deadly police shooting of a teenager of North African descent during a traffic stop in a Paris suburb.

Police made 180 arrests during a second night of unrest, Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said, as public anger spilled onto the streets in towns and cities across the country.

Macron held a crisis meeting with senior ministers over the shooting and Darmanin announced afterwards that 40,000 policemen would be deployed across the country, including 5,000 in the Paris region, on Thursday evening to put on end to the unrest.

This is nearly four times the numbers that were mobilized on Wednesday evening.

"The response of the state must be extremely firm," Darmanin said.

Both Darmanin and Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne ruled out declaring a state of emergency for now.

The incident has fed longstanding complaints of police violence and systemic racism inside law enforcement agencies from rights groups and within the low-income, racially mixed suburbs that ring major cities in France.

The shooting of the 17-year-old, identified as Nahel, took place in Nanterre, on the western outskirts of Paris. The local prosecutor said investigative magistrates had placed the officer involved under formal investigation for voluntary homicide.

Under France's legal system, being placed under formal investigation is akin to being charged in Anglo-Saxon jurisdictions.

Tuesday's killing was the third fatal shooting during traffic stops in France so far in 2023, down from a record 13 last year, a spokesperson for the national police said.