Deadly terror attacks in France since 2015

Police stand guard in Paris after a person was killed and several injured in a knife attack. PHOTO: AFP

This story was first published on March 23, 2018, and updated on May 13, 2018

PARIS (AFP) - A knifeman shouting Allahu akbar (God is greatest) was shot dead by police in central Paris late Saturday (May 12) after he killed one person and injured four, prompting a terror probe.

Here is a recap of jihadist attacks that have killed more than 245 people across France since the 2015 Charlie Hebdo shootings.

2018

- March 23: Gunman Radouane Lakdim killed four people in the southern towns of Trebes and Carcassonne, including policeman Lieutenant-Colonel Arnaud Beltrame who was hailed as a hero for taking the place of a hostage.

Lakdim was shot dead by police after a stand-off.

French gendarmes block the access to Trebes, where a man took hostages at a supermarket on March 23, 2018. PHOTO: AFP

2017

- October 1: A 29-year-old Tunisian cries "Allah Akbar" (God is Greatest) and kills two young women with a knife at the main train station in the southern city of Marseille.

Ahmed Hanachi is shot dead by soldiers on patrol. His attack is claimed by the ISIS group.

- April 20: A 39-year-old ex-convict shoots dead an on-duty policeman and wounds two others on Paris' Champs-Elysees avenue.

Gunman Karim Cheurfi is killed by police and a note praising ISIS is found next to his body, with the group claiming responsibility.

2016

- July 26: Two teenagers slit the throat of an 85-year-old priest in front of five worshippers at his church in the western town of Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray.

A worker installs a commemorative plaque to pay tribute to French priest Father Jacques Hamel on July 26, 2017, before a mass in his memory one year after he was killed by Islamist militants in an attack on his church in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray. PHOTO: REUTERS

Abdel Malik Petitjean and Adel Kermiche, both aged 19, are killed by police. The murder is claimed by the ISIS. The teenagers had sworn allegiance to the group in a video.

People attending a memorial on the Promenade des Anglais on July 14, 2017, as part of the commemorations of the Bastille Day fatal truck attack in Nice, France, the year before. PHOTO: REUTERS

- July 14: A Tunisian ploughs a truck through a large crowd gathered for Bastille Day fireworks on the Promenade des Anglais in the Mediterranean city of Nice. The attack kills 86 people and injures more than 400.

The driver, Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, 31, is shot dead by security forces. ISIS claims responsibility.

- June 13: Larossi Abballa, 25, uses a knife to kill a police officer and his partner at their home in Magnanville, west of Paris, in front of their young son.

Abballa is killed by a police SWAT team, but has already claimed the murders on social media in the name of ISIS.

2015

- November 13: France is hit by the worst terror attacks in its history. ISIS extremists armed with assault rifles and explosives strike outside a France-Germany football match at the national stadium, Paris cafes, and the Bataclan concert hall in a coordinated assault that leaves 130 people dead and more than 350 wounded.

- August 21: Passengers prevent 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 gunman is identified as 25-year-old Moroccan national Ayoub El Khazzani, known to intelligence services for links to radical Islam.

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Assailants rammed a car into a gas plant in France on Friday morning triggering two blasts that killed one. A decapitated head and Islamist flag were found at the scene.

- June 26: Frenchman Yassin Salhi, 35, kills and beheads his boss and displays the severed head, surrounded by two Islamic flags, on the fence of a gas plant in Saint-Quentin-Fallavier in south-eastern France. He tries to blow up the factory, but is arrested. He commits suicide in his jail cell.

- April 19: Sid Ahmed Ghlam, an Algerian IT student, is 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 say they found documents about Al-Qaeda and ISIS at his home, and that he had been in touch with a suspected militant in Syria about an attack on a church.

- February 3: A knife-wielding man attacks three soldiers guarding a Jewish community centre in Nice. The 30-year-old assailant, Moussa Coulibaly, is arrested. In custody, he expresses his hatred for France, the police, the military and Jews.

Various publications from members of the magazine Charlie Hebdo are seen on sale at the premises of the Les Folies Bergeres theatre in Paris on Jan 6, 2018, as French rights groups host a freedom of speech celebration to mark three years since the jihadist attack on the satirical weekly. PHOTO: AFP

- January 7-9: Two men armed with Kalashnikov rifles storm the Paris offices of satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo killing 12 people. A policewoman is killed just outside Paris the following day, while a gunman takes hostages at a Jewish supermarket, four of whom are killed. The attackers are killed in separate shootouts with police, but not before claiming allegiance to Al-Qaeda and ISIS.

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