Terror attacks in France

PARIS // France has been under a state of emergency for more than two years. Here is a recap of major attacks and foiled attempts in that time.

January 7-9, 2015:

Two men armed with Kalashnikov rifles storm the Paris offices of satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, killing 12 people. A policewoman was killed outside Paris on January 8, while a gunman took hostages at a Jewish supermarket on January 9, four of whom were killed. The attackers were killed in shootouts with police, but not before claiming allegiance to Al Qaeda and ISIL.

February 3:

A man with a knife attacked three soldiers guarding a Jewish community centre in Nice on the French Riviera. The assailant, Moussa Coulibaly, 30, was arrested. In custody, he voiced his hatred for France, the police, the military and Jews.

April 19:

Sid Ahmed Ghlam, an Algerian IT student, was arrested on suspicion of killing a woman who was found shot dead in her car, and of planning an attack on a church in the Paris suburb of Villejuif. Prosecutors said they found documents about Al Qaeda and ISIL at his home, and that he had been in touch with a suspected extremist in Syria about an attack on a church.

June 26:

Frenchman Yassin Salhi, 35, killed and beheaded his employer Herve Cornara and displayed the severed head, flanked by two Islamic flags, on the fence of a gas plant in Saint-Quentin-Fallavier in south-east France. He tried to blow up the factory, but was arrested. He killed himself in prison in December.

July 13:

Four men aged 16 to 23, including a former soldier, were arrested on charges of planning an attack on a military camp to behead an officer in the name of jihad. They pledged fealty to ISIL.

August 21:

Passengers prevented a bloodbath on a high-speed Thalys train from Amsterdam to Paris, tackling a man who opened fire on travellers. He was armed with a Kalashnikov assault rifle, an automatic pistol and a box-cutter. The Moroccan gunman, Ayoub El Khazzani, 25, was known to authorities for links to extremists.

November 13:

ISIL militants armed with assault rifles and explosives staged an attack outside a France-Germany football match at the national stadium, Paris cafes, and the Bataclan concert hall in a coordinated assault that killed 130 people and injured more than 350, the deadliest attack in French history.

January 7, 2016:

A man wielding a meat cleaver and carrying an ISIL emblem was shot dead as he tried to attack a police station in Paris. Convicted of theft in 2013, the man identified himself at the time as Sallah Ali, who was born in Morocco.

June 13:

Larossi Abballa, 25, killed policeman Jean-Baptiste Salvaing, 42, and his partner, Jessica Schneider, 36, at their home in Magnanville, west of Paris. Salvaing was stabbed to death, while Schneider’s throat was slit in front of their son. Abballa, who claimed the murders on social media in the name of ISIL, was killed by a police SWAT team.

July 14:

A lorry ploughed through a crowd on Nice’s Promenade des Anglais after a Bastille Day fireworks display, killing 84 people and injuring more than 330. The driver, Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, 31, was shot dead by security forces. ISIL claimed responsibility.

July 26:

Attackers slit the throat of a priest at his church in the Normandy town of Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray.

February 3, 2017:

A man armed with a machete in each hand attacked four soldiers on patrol at Paris’s Louvre Museum, shouting “Allahu Akbar”. The attacker, a 29-year-old Egyptian, was seriously injured.

March 18:

A man, 39, was killed at Paris’s Orly airport after attacking a soldier. “I am ready to die for Allah,” he shouted, according to French prosecutor Francois Molins.

April 19:

Police arrested two Frenchmen in their 20s in Marseilles on suspicion of planning an attack, with bomb-making materials and guns found in searches.

April 21:

A known terrorist suspect shot dead a policeman and wounded two people on the Champs-Elysees, before police killed him. ISIL claimed the assault.