In a dramatic escalation of France’s war against Islamic State,
François Hollande has pledged to intensify his country’s airstrikes
against the terror group, as the mastermind suspected of organising
Friday’s carnage in Paris was revealed to be a notorious Belgian-born
Isis extremist living in Syria.
Unveiling a raft of hardline measures to counter domestic extremism on Monday, the French president told an exceptional assembly of both houses of parliament at the Palace of Versailles: “France is at war ... But we are not engaged in a war of civilisations, because these assassins do not represent any civilisation.”
A day after French jets pounded Isis targets in the terror group’s Syrian stronghold of Raqqa, Hollande said the aerial campaign would be stepped up, announcing a tripling of France’s strike capacity in the region with the departure of the aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle for the eastern Mediterranean.
He also said in the coming weeks he would be meeting the US and Russian presidents, Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin, in an effort to build “a union of all who can fight this terrorist army in a single coalition”.
In further signs of a clampdown, the interior minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, said police on Monday had seized arms and ammunition in more than 160 early morning anti-terror raids across the country, taking 23 people into custody and placing 104 more under house arrest.
Hollande described the bloody series of shootings and suicide bombings in bars, restaurants, the national stadium and a crowded concert hall that killed 129 people as “acts of war”. They “were decided and planned in Syria, prepared and organised in Belgium and perpetrated on our soil, with French complicity”, he said.
Unveiling a raft of hardline measures to counter domestic extremism on Monday, the French president told an exceptional assembly of both houses of parliament at the Palace of Versailles: “France is at war ... But we are not engaged in a war of civilisations, because these assassins do not represent any civilisation.”
A day after French jets pounded Isis targets in the terror group’s Syrian stronghold of Raqqa, Hollande said the aerial campaign would be stepped up, announcing a tripling of France’s strike capacity in the region with the departure of the aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle for the eastern Mediterranean.
He also said in the coming weeks he would be meeting the US and Russian presidents, Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin, in an effort to build “a union of all who can fight this terrorist army in a single coalition”.
In further signs of a clampdown, the interior minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, said police on Monday had seized arms and ammunition in more than 160 early morning anti-terror raids across the country, taking 23 people into custody and placing 104 more under house arrest.
Hollande described the bloody series of shootings and suicide bombings in bars, restaurants, the national stadium and a crowded concert hall that killed 129 people as “acts of war”. They “were decided and planned in Syria, prepared and organised in Belgium and perpetrated on our soil, with French complicity”, he said.
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