Attacks in France since Charlie Hebdo slayings

Published November 14, 2015
Twelve people were killed in the attack on the Paris offices of Charlie Hebdo. —Reuters/File
Twelve people were killed in the attack on the Paris offices of Charlie Hebdo. —Reuters/File

PARIS: Multiple attacks which claimed at least 120 lives in Paris on Friday night are the latest in a string of incidents in France this year with suspected links to radical Islam.

Know more: More than 120 people killed in Paris terror attacks

January 7-9

Two men armed with Kalashnikov rifles storm the Paris offices of Charlie Hebdo, a weekly known for satirical caricatures of Islam and other religions. They kill 12 people including eight cartoonists and journalists as well as two police officers, before fleeing.

A policewoman is killed just outside Paris the following day in a shooting investigators later link to the Charlie Hebdo attack.

A gunman takes hostages at a Jewish supermarket, four of whom are killed.

The Charlie Hebdo attackers and the hostage-taker are killed in separate shootouts with police.

Related: Editor among 12 killed in attack on Paris weekly

February 3

Three soldiers guarding a Jewish community centre in Nice on the French Riviera, are attacked by a knife-wielding man. The 30-year-old assailant, Moussa Coulibaly, from a Parisian suburb, is arrested.

In custody, he expresses his hatred for France, the police, the military and Jews.

April 19

Sid Ahmed Ghlam, an Algerian IT student, is arrested in Paris on suspicion of killing a woman who was found shot dead in the passenger seat of her car, and of planning an attack on a church in the Paris suburb of Villejuif.

Prosecutors say they found documents about Al-Qaeda and the self-styled Islamic State (IS) at his home, and that he had been in touch with a suspected jihadist in Syria about an attack on a church.

June 26

Yassin Salhi, 35, kills and beheads his boss Herve Cornara and displays the severed head on the fence of a gas plant surrounded by Islamic flags.

He tries to blow up the factory at Saint-Quentin-Fallavier in southeast France, but is arrested.

July 13

Four young men aged 16 to 23, including a former soldier, are arrested on charges of planning an attack on a military camp to behead an officer in the name of jihad.

They proclaim allegiance to IS.

August 21

Two off-duty US servicemen and a friend prevent a bloodbath on a high-speed Thalys train from Amsterdam to Paris, tackling a man who opened fire on passengers.

He was armed with a Kalashnikov assault rifle, an automatic pistol, and a box-cutter. One passenger sustains a gun injury, and another a knife wound.

The gunman is identified as 25-year-old Moroccan national Ayoub El Khazzani, known to intelligence services for links to radical Islam.

November 10

French authorities say they have arrested a 25-year-old man with links to an IS jihadist in Syria over a plot to attack military personnel at a naval base.

Monitored by intelligence agencies for a months, he had tried to obtain material for carrying out the attack in Toulon in the southeast of the country.

Opinion

Editorial

Under siege
Updated 03 May, 2024

Under siege

Whether through direct censorship, withholding advertising, harassment or violence, the press in Pakistan navigates a hazardous terrain.
Meddlesome ways
03 May, 2024

Meddlesome ways

AFTER this week’s proceedings in the so-called ‘meddling case’, it appears that the majority of judges...
Mass transit mess
03 May, 2024

Mass transit mess

THAT Karachi — one of the world’s largest megacities — does not have a mass transit system worth the name is ...
Punishing evaders
02 May, 2024

Punishing evaders

THE FBR’s decision to block mobile phone connections of more than half a million individuals who did not file...
Engaging Riyadh
Updated 02 May, 2024

Engaging Riyadh

It must be stressed that to pull in maximum foreign investment, a climate of domestic political stability is crucial.
Freedom to question
02 May, 2024

Freedom to question

WITH frequently suspended freedoms, increasing violence and few to speak out for the oppressed, it is unlikely that...