PARIS: France plans to ban a Turkish ultra-nationalist group known as the Grey Wolves, the interior minister said Monday, in a move that risks further straining already tense relations with Ankara.

The dissolution was announced after a memorial centre to mass killings of Armenians during World War I was defaced with graffiti including the name of the Grey Wolves at the weekend.

The move to ban the Grey Wolves - seen as a wing of a party allied to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan - will be put to the French cabinet on Wednesday, Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin told a parliamentary committee.

"To put it mildly, we are talking about a particularly aggressive group," Darmanin said. "It deserves to be dissolved," he added, saying the move meant that actions or meetings by the group can be punished by fines or imprisonment. His announcement came after a memorial centre outside Lyon to the mass killings of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, regarded as genocide by Armenia, was defaced with pro-Turkish slogans including "Grey Wolves" and "RTE" in reference to Erdogan.

The incident in the town of Decines-Charpieu came against a background of sharp tension in France between its Armenian and Turkish communities over the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh.

Turkey has strongly backed its ally Azerbaijan in the conflict over the region that is part of Azerbaijan but has been controlled by Armenian separatists since a 1990s war as the Soviet Union broke up.

Four people were wounded outside Lyon last Wednesday in clashes between suspected Turkish nationalists and Armenians protesting against Azerbaijan's military offensive.-AFP