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France to intensify airstrikes against Isis in Syria France to intensify airstrikes against Isis in Syria
(about 3 hours later)
François Hollande has said France’s airstrikes against Islamic State in Syria will be intensified after the terror attacks that killed 129 people in Paris on Friday, with the aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle set to leave for the eastern Mediterranean, tripling the country’s air capacity in the region. In a dramatic escalation of France’s war against Islamic State, Francois Hollande on Monday 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.
Addressing both houses of parliament at the Palace of Versailles on Monday, the French president said the country was engaged in “a war against jihadi terrorism”. The sponsors of the carnage in the capital “must know that their crimes further strengthen the determination of France to fight them and to destroy them”, he said. Unveiling a raft of hardline measures to counter domestic extremism, 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.”
“More strikes are needed, and we will carry them out,” Hollande added. “More support for all fighting against Isis is needed, and France will provide it. But we need a union of all who can fight this terrorist army in a single coalition.” 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.
Hollande said he would be meeting Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin in the coming weeks to discuss more effective pooling of France’s resources with those of the US and Russia. He also said he would be meeting the US and Russian presidents, Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin, in the coming weeks in an effort to build “a union of all who can fight this terrorist army in a single coalition”.
Announcing an extension of France’s national state of emergency to three months, Hollande also called for constitutional reforms to allow the state to better counter the new terrorist menace. 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.
French law must allow dual nationals to be stripped of their citizenship if they were convicted of terrorism, and banned from entering France if they presented a terrorism risk, he said. Hollande described the bloody series of shootings and suicide bombing 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.
He said 5,000 more police officers – mainly anti-terrorist and border forces – would be hired, and that no further cuts would be made to military personnel until at least 2019. Extending the country’s state of emergency by three months, he demanded changes to French law to allow authorities to better combat a “war of jihadi terror”. Five thousand extra police, 2,500 judicial staff and 1,000 customs officials would be hired, and military personnel cuts frozen.
Hollande also demanded the swift and effective introduction of “coordinated and systematic controls” at the EU’s external borders to avoid the reappearance of national frontiers and dismantling of the European Union. As details emerged of an elaborate and well-equipped international terror operation planned in Syria and carried out by a sleeper cell in Brussels, Hollande also demanded “co-ordinated and systematic controls” on the EU’s external borders, a greater effort to control illegal arms trafficking, and improved surveillance of returning jihadis.
Among a raft of further measures, he demanded asylum should be granted to refugees entitled to it, but those who are not must leave France; that more must be done to combat illegal arms trafficking; and surveillance of returning jihadis must be improved. The president’s solemn speech followed reports that French intelligence officials believe the mastermind behind the attacks is a Belgian extremist in Syria, Abdel-Hamid Abu Oud, recently sentenced in his absence to 20 years in prison for encouraging young Belgians to fight for Isis.
“But France must stay the same,” the president said. “The barbarians who want to disfigure it … must not be allowed to change France’s soul.” Abu Oud, 27, was “investigators’ best bet”, intelligence officials told French media. He is said to have carried out several armed robberies with one of the Paris attackers, and a French jihadi arrested last summer after returning from Syria reportedly told police Abu Oud had instructed him to attack a concert hall.
The country’s “values, culture, youth, way of life” would be preserved, he concluded, because “no barbarians will prevent us from living how we have decided to live. To live fully. Terrorism will never destroy the Republic, because the Republic will destroy terrorism.” Abu Oud is also a former resident of Molenbeek, the Brussels suburb that is a longtime base for hardcore Salafist radicals, breeding ground for extremists, the biggest source in Europe of foreign fighters in Syria – and home to several members of the militant cell that carried out the attacks.
In other developments: Related: Paris attacks 'mastermind' Abdel-Hamid Abu Oud: what we know
Prosecutors said five of the seven suicide bombers who died on Friday had now been identified. Four were French, and the fifth possibly Syrian. One of three attackers who blew themselves up at the Bataclan was identified on Monday as Samy Amimour, 28, a one-time bus driver from the Paris suburb of Drancy.
Another, who detonated his explosive vest outside the Stade de France stadium, was carrying a Syrian passport in the name of Ahmad Almohammad, aged 25, from Idlib. His fingerprints matched those of someone who transited the Greek island of Leros in October, prosecutors said, and claimed asylum in Serbia four days later.
Omar Ismaïl Mostefai, 29, from Chartres, south-west of Paris, was the first killer to be officially identified, on Sunday. Police sources have named two other dead French assailants as Bilal Hadfi and Brahim Abdeslam, whose brother Salah, currently on the run, is also suspected of involvement in the attacks.
French media said all the attackers so far identified were known to have spent time in Syria. The latest official figures estimate that 520 French men and women are currently in the Syrian and Iraqi war zones. About 137 have died there and some 250 have returned home.
As a shocked nation returned to work after the attacks, Hollande joined a crowd of students from the Sorbonne university in Paris at midday for a sombre minute of silence observed by thousands at similar gatherings around the country.
Much of the country came to halt, metro trains in Paris stopped, and large crowds gathered in central Paris, including at the Place de la République close to where several of the shootings took place. Schoolchildren and office workers paused to stand at their desks, while MPs sang La Marseillaise.
Paris hospitals reported that they had treated 415 people who were injured or traumatised by the assaults, the deadliest in France since the second world war. More than 40 remained in a critical condition.
The raids in cities including Lyon, Toulouse, Grenoble, Marseille and Lille, were mostly described as “preventative” anti-terroroperations. In Lyon, police seized a “war arsenal” of weapons including a rocket launcher, pistols and a Kalashnikov.
The prime minister, Manuel Valls, said there was a real risk of more terror attacks to come. “We know that operations were being prepared, and are still being prepared,” Valls said. “France will live with the threat of new attacks for a long time to come.”
The raids followed France’s biggest airstrike on Syria to date on Sunday night, targeting Isis positions in Raqqa after the group’s claim of responsibility for the Paris carnage. Islamic State warned in a video on Monday that any country that struck at its forces would suffer the same fate as France, promising specifically to target Washington.
Ten fighter jets were launched from the United Arab Emirates and Jordan and 20 bombs dropped on a command centre, a recruitment centre for jihadis, a munitions depot, and a training camp for fighters, the defence ministry said. Activists in Raqqa said the strikes did appear to have killed any civilians.
Related: Paris attack suspects: what do we know about them?
Amid escalating claims of intelligence failings in France and Belgium, a senior Turkish official said authorities had twice flagged Mostefai to their French counterparts but were not asked for information about him until after the attacks.
It emerged on Sunday that Iraqi intelligence, too, had given French intelligence agencies specific warnings about imminent “bombings or assassinations or hostage-takings” the day before the Paris onslaught.
Speaking at a G20 summit in Turkey, Obama said the US had no intelligence information ahead of the attacks that would have given a clue that an attack was imminent.
Salah Abdeslam picture
The investigation into the Paris attacks quickly led to Belgium after police discovered that two cars used by the militants had been rented in the Brussels area. A manhunt is still underway for Salah Abdeslam, 26, who rented a Volkswagen Polo parked outside the Bataclan where 89 people died.
One of Salah’s brothers, Brahim, 31, blew himself up outside the concert hall. Another, Mohamed, was one of five suspects arrested in Molenbeek over the weekend who have now been released without charge. Two others detained in raids have been changed with being part of a terror group and links to a terror attack.
Hunting for Salah, Belgian police staged further raids in Molenbeek on Monday, but no arrests were made. Mohamed said he had no idea where his brother was. “He grew up here, He studied here,” he said in Molenbeek.
“He’s a completely normal boy.” His parents, he added, were “in shock ... I am touched by what happened ... I think of the victims, the families of the victims. But you will also understand that we have a mother, we have a family.”
France urged its European partners to move swiftly to improve intelligence sharing, fight arms trafficking and terror financing, and strengthen border security as a result of the attacks. “France was attacked, but all of Europe was hit,” said Harle Desir, the Europe secretary. “We were hit together, and we will respond together.”
Concluding his address, Hollande said that despite the “abomination” of the attacks, France must stay the same. “The barbarians who want to disfigure it … must not be allowed to change France’s soul,” he said. Ultimately, the country’s “values, culture, youth, way of life” would be preserved, because “terrorism will never destroy the Republic. The Republic will destroy terrorism.”