Months after the deadly Islamic State and al-Qaida-inspired attacks on the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, which left 17 people dead in Paris in January, France has fallen victim to another jihadi onslaught of even more horrifying proportions.
According to most estimates, France has lost more people to militant Islam than any other country in Europe: a report by the French senate in April concluded that at least 1,430 of the 3,000-plus known European jihadis who had then travelled to Syria and Iraq to fight for Isis were French.
The AFP news agency reported earlier this year that French intelligence services were monitoring another 1,570 people who authorities believed had some kind of connection to Syrian networks, while up to 7,000 more were considered at riskof heading down the same path.
The French president, François Hollande, said on Friday night: "We know where these attacks come from," without naming any individual group. "There are indeed good reasons to be afraid."
More than 150 French radicals are currently serving prison sentences in France. But more alarming for the country's hard-pressed security services is the fact that at least 200 French jihadis who have spent time in territory held by Isis are known to have since returned to the country.
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The four-man group responsible for the attacks on Charlie Hebdo's offices and a kosher supermarket in central Paris had connections to Isis through Amedy Coulibaly, who allegedly masterminded the assaults and claimed to be "fighting for Islamic State"; another of the attackers is known to have attended an al-Qaida training camp in Yemen.
Earlier this year a report by the King's College's International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence found that only Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Russia and Jordan had more of their own fighting with Isis than France; at that time there were more than twice as many French radicals as German and British fighters.
Despite a number of anti-radicalisation campaigns by the French authorities, the government has seemingly been unable to prevent considerable numbers of the country's 4.7m-strong Muslim community – around 7.5% of the population – from veering towards violent radicalism and jihad.
The resentment of disaffected young men and women from a disadvantaged community frequently discriminated against in education, employment and housing has been further fuelled by largely symbolic measures they feel have been taken against Islam under France's strong secular tradition, such as the 2010 ban on wearing full-face veil in public
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