Jihadist attacks on French soil since 1995
Flowers and candles are placed in homage to the vistimes of the attacks of November 13, 2015 in front of the restaurant Le Carillon in Paris.
© Frank Augstein / AP Photo
Text by: Patricia Blettery Follow
9 mins
The trial of the attacks of November 13, 2015 opens on September 8, in Paris.
From 1995, and especially from 2012, French territory was regularly targeted by jihadist attacks.
The attack in Toulouse in front of the Jewish school Ozar Hatorah, Charlie Hebdo, the Hyper Cacher, the attack on the Thalys, the Bataclan, Magnanville, Nice, Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray: the attacks are often unpredictable and unstoppable committed by individuals organized in networks or isolated, claiming to be Islam.
Back to the jihadist attacks that hit France.
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For many specialists, the Paris attacks in the summer of 1995
,
which left eight dead and 200 wounded, the deadliest being that of the RER station Saint-Michel Notre-Dame, attributed to the GIA (Armed Islamist group based in Algeria), are the marker of a transition towards the pattern of Islamist terrorism as known in France in the 2000s.
Until then, fighters from abroad attacked France because it supported the Algerian power.
Khaled Kelkal, convicted of the 1995 Paris attacks, was born in Algeria but grew up in the suburbs of Lyon.
He initiates the line of young people breaking with their families, fascinated by death, radicalized on French soil who will take action.
The violence of the Algerian war is not very far in their minds.
In May 2004 an Islamic group, the Armed French Islamic Front, claimed responsibility for the attack on the Indonesian embassy in Paris and demanded the release of two members of the GIA and the 1995 bombers.
Planned and orchestrated assaults
Subsequently, the jihadists change their reference. Quite often they've been to Afghanistan or Pakistan, or both. They claim to be al-Qaeda, a clandestine organization engaged in mass terrorism, founded by Osama bin Laden, the person responsible for the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
On March 11, 2012
, Mohamed Merah killed Imad Ibn Ziaten, marshal of logistics. Chief, then assassinates in the following days two other soldiers, seriously wounds one, and kills four people, including three children, at the Ozar Hatorah school of Toulouse (Haute-Garonne). He says he is acting on behalf of al-Qaeda.
December 20, 2014
, a man bursts into the police station of Joué-lès-Tours (Indre-et-Loire) with cries of "Allah Akbar" (God is great).
The exploitation of the attacker's cell phone, shot dead at the time of the attack, proves that he was in contact with individuals known for their radicalization and their links with the Salafist movement.
January 7, 2015
, targeting the editorial staff of
Charlie Hebdo
in Paris, it is freedom and its democratic nuances, including freedom of expression and secularism that the jihadists are attacking. The publication of the cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad by the satirical magazine ignites the powder. The victims are Frédéric Boisseau, an operations manager of the Sodexo company responsible for maintaining the building in the 11th arrondissement of Paris where Charlie Hebdo is located, the cartoonists Cabu, Charb, Honoré, Tignous and Wolinski, the psychoanalyst Elsa Cayat, the 'economist Bernard Maris, Mustapha Ourrad, corrector in the editorial staff, the policeman Franck Brinsolaro who ensured the protection of Charb, Michel Renaud, invited to attend the conference that day, and Ahmed Merabet, a policeman killed on Boulevard Richard Lenoir .The Kouachi brothers claim responsibility for the attack in the name of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQPA). Amedy Coulibaly, the accomplice of the Kouachi brothers will claim, on behalf of the organization Islamic State, the murder of Clarissa Jean-Philippe, a municipal policewoman in Montrouge, which occurred on January 8, then of the four people of Jewish faith killed during of the hostage-taking of the Hyper Cacher Porte de Vincennes. Despite the proven complicity of the attackers, no link between the two terrorist organizations, in rivalry since 2013, has been demonstrated.then the four people of Jewish faith killed during the hostage-taking of the Hyper Cacher Porte de Vincennes. Despite the proven complicity of the attackers, no link between the two terrorist organizations, in rivalry since 2013, has been demonstrated.then the four people of Jewish faith killed during the hostage-taking of the Hyper Cacher Porte de Vincennes. Despite the proven complicity of the attackers, no link between the two terrorist organizations, in rivalry since 2013, has been demonstrated.
On June 26,
a radicalized individual in connection with the Salafist movement executed, in Isère, Hervé Cornara, 54, director of the ATC transport company and injured eleven other people. Several attacks were foiled in France in July 2015, but also in a Thalys train on the Amsterdam-Paris link,
on August 21, 2015
, where passengers managed to neutralize the assailant of Moroccan origin.
Then on November 13, 2015, Paris was again attacked in several places by three jihadist commandos.
In total, one hundred and thirty dead and nearly four hundred injured.
The whole is claimed by the Islamic State group in a text which explicitly refers to France's engagement in the international coalition in Iraq and Syria.
The only survivor of the three commandos, Salah Abdeslam, was arrested in Belgium in March 2016. He will be tried in September 2021. The main organizers are presumed dead in Syria or in Iraq.
The killers of November 13 are considered executors.
Sporadic stabbing terrorism
At the start of 2016, a new Vigipirate plan to fight terrorism entered into force in France, with three levels of threat. The last level corresponds to an “emergency attack” when the State services consider that an attack is probable within a short time. Unfortunately, this does not prevent a series of deadly attacks committed throughout France.
On June 13, 2016
, Larossi Abballa kills Jean-Baptiste Salvaing, police commander, and his partner Jessica Schneider with knives in Magnanville in the Paris region. He also takes their 3.5-year-old son hostage. After filming himself with the victims' computers via Facebook, he claims to pledge allegiance to the self-proclaimed caliph of the Islamic State group and is shot dead in an assault. Unlike the terrorists of the November 13 commando, the Magnanville killer did not return from Syria. But it is inspired by Daesh (Islamic State).
The summer of 2016 brought no lull on the front lines of the attacks on French soil.
On July 14, 2016 in Nice
, a truck rushes into the crowd celebrating the National Day on the Promenade des Anglais after the fireworks display. There are 86 dead and more than 400 injured. Mohamed Lahouaiej Boulel, a 31-year-old Tunisian, was killed the same evening at the wheel of his truck by the police. Five years later, the investigation has not confirmed any connection between the jihadist organization Islamic State and Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, even if the attack was indeed claimed by Daesh. Specialists evoke an opportunist claim. In Magnanville as in Nice, it could be last minute contacts with the terrorist organization.
On July 26
, Father Jacques Hamel was assassinated in his church in Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray (Seine-Maritime) by two men claiming to be Daesh. On
September 4
, a radicalized detainee at the Val-d'Oise remand center in Osny attacks two guards with an artisanal punch, seriously injuring one of them. He is sentenced to twenty-eight years in prison.
In 2017,
a new series of attacks took place in France.
On February 3
, a man armed with a machete in each hand rushes at four soldiers from Operation Sentinel at the Carrousel du Louvre in Paris, shouting "
Allah Akbar
". The attacker, a 29-year-old Egyptian, was seriously injured by retaliatory fire.
On the evening of April 20
, Karim Cheurfi, a 39-year-old Frenchman with a heavy judicial past, fired an automatic weapon at a police van parked on the Champs-Élysées in Paris. He kills a policeman and injures two others, as well as a passerby, before being shot. The attack was quickly claimed by the Islamic State organization.
June 6
, a 40-year-old Algerian attacks a policeman with a hammer in front of Notre-Dame cathedral in Paris. He shouts "
This is for Syria
" before being injured by the police.
On September 15
, a man armed with a knife attacks a soldier from Operation Sentinel in the Parisian metro Châtelet with the cry of “
Allah Akbar
”.
On October 1
, a 29-year-old Tunisian stabbed two young women to death in front of the Marseille train station in the south of France, shouting "
Allah Akbar
", before being shot by soldiers. The attack is claimed by IS.
On March 23, 2018
, an attack occurred at the Super U in Trèbes, near Carcassonne (Aude).
A gendarme, Colonel Beltrame, two retirees and a butcher die.
The Islamic State group will claim responsibility for the attack.
On May 12
, a man armed with a kitchen knife attacked passers-by in the Opera district in Paris.
The individual, French born in Chechnya, kills one person and injures four others.
Once again, ISIS claims responsibility for the attack.
On December 11
of the same year, the Strasbourg Christmas market was targeted.
The gunman Cherif Chekatt killed five people, 11 others were wounded.
He was shot dead by the police after 48 hours on the run.
In a video later found on a USB drive, he pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group.
Individual and religious terrorism
On October 3, 2019
, it was the Paris police headquarters that was the scene of a new attack. Three police officers and an administrative agent are murdered by a radicalized employee who occupied the function of administrative assistant at the Intelligence Directorate of the Paris Police Prefecture (DRPP). No claim is involved.
On September 25, 2020,
a stabbing attack took place near the former premises of Charlie Hebdo, rue Nicolas Appert in the 11th arrondissement of Paris. The two injured are a man and a woman, employees of a news agency. The attacker, of Pakistani origin, said he acted in retaliation for the republication of the prophet's cartoons.
On October 16, 2020
, Samuel Paty, teacher, was beheaded in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine (Yvelines). His killer, an 18-year-old Chechen, claims his gesture in an audio message in Russian where he says he "
avenged the prophet
" Muhammad. He reproaches the professor of history and geography for having "
shown it in an insulting manner
". "
Brothers, pray that Allah will accept me as a martyr
”he said.
No jihadist movement has claimed responsibility for this attack.
On the following October 29
, a 21-year-old Tunisian kills three people with knives in the Notre-Dame Basilica in Nice.
The Vigipirate plan is raised to the level of "emergency attack" on the whole of French territory.
On April 23, 2021,
a policewoman died in Rambouillet under the stab wounds of a radicalized 36-year-old Tunisian.
Our selection on the subject
•
To read:
→ November 13 trial: what were the warning signs of the Paris attacks?
→ November 13 trial: the origins of jihadism in France
→ Islamic State: how the terrorist group's arms supply chain worked
•
To listen:
→ And now how to fight radical Islam in France?
→ Calls on the news: your questions on the return of the jihadists with David Thomson
→ Women of jihadists: blind accomplices or voluntary victims?
→ How the Islamic State group attracts young people to it
→ Ondes de choc, an original podcast dedicated to the reconstruction journey of victims of terrorism around the world.
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