Terrorism in France

Several gunmen fire into the car of the French Minister of Information, Jacques Soustelle. The minister survives unharmed, however four bystanders are struck and one is killed.^[29]

A bomb attack on a Strasbourg–Paris train carried: it was the deadliest terrorist attack in modern French history until the November 2015 Paris attacks.^[30]

A man exits a car and throws a bomb into the compound of the Algerian Consulate; the subsequent explosion kills 4 and injures 20 more, 4 seriously.^[31]

A bomb explodes at the Drugstore Saint Germain, part of the fashionable circuit of restaurants and bars on Paris's Left Bank, killing two and injuring 34.^[32]

As İsmail Erez is returning from a reception – and as his vehicle approached the building of the Turkish Embassy in Paris – a group of 3–4 armed Armenian militants ambush the automobile, killing him and his driver Talip Yener.^[33][34]

Three terrorists open fire on El Al passengers in the departure lounge. All three terrorists are killed, along with one policeman, and three French tourists are also injured.^[35]

At about 21:00 (UTC+1), three hooded men armed with sub machine guns enter a quiet neighborhood bar and shoot 21 patrons, killing nine. The attack at Le Telephone bar was likely related to organized crime, although none of the attackers were identified.^[36]

A gunman fires an automatic weapon amid crowds of Christmas shoppers, killing the director of the Turkish National Tourist Office, Yilmaz Colton, in Paris. The director was struck by three bullets while walking along the Champs-Élysées.^[37]

A bomb blast destroys the ground floor of the Syrian Embassy, killing one and injuring 8 others. Three of those injured were in a serious condition, including a pregnant woman. The attack happened 2 hours before the arrival of then Foreign Minister of Syria, Abdel Halim Khaddam, in France.^[38]

Former Iranian Prime Minister Shahpour Bakhtiar escapes an assassination attempt in which a French policeman and a female neighbour are killed. Four other officers were wounded, one seriously. Allegedly posing as reporters, a trio of gunmen attempted to enter the exiled leader's apartment in Neuilly, a suburb of Paris. A police guard at an armored door to the residence resisted and a gunfight took place.^[39][40]

Two gunmen storm the Turkish Consulate General in Lyon. The gunmen are unable to locate the Turkish consul general and open fire on the waiting area, killing two people and wounding eleven others, two seriously.^[41]

A bomb went off outside the Union Libérale Israélite de France synagogue on Rue Copernic. The bomb had been hidden in the saddlebags of a motorcycle parked outside the synagogue on the eve of Simchat Torah. The explosion happened shortly before the end of services, however one of those killed were members of the congregation. French police initially suspected that the attack had been carried out by neo-Nazis, but later attributed it to the PFLP or one of its offshoots.^{[42][43][44][45]}

An unknown gunman murders the Jewish owners of a Paris travel agency that specialized in tours to Israel. The assailant walked into the office of IT-Tours and fired from an automatic pistol, fatally wounding Edwin Douek, the proprietor. His wife, Michele, was killed instantly and a clerk was slightly wounded. Edwin Douek died of his wounds later in a hospital.^[46]

Two gunmen open fire on Turkish Labour Attache, Resat Morali, and the Religious Affairs Officer in the Turkish Embassy, Tecelli Ari. Both are killed.^[47]

(2 days)

At about 11:30 CET, four members of Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia took over the consulate killing a Turkish guard, wounding the Turkish Consul and taking 56 people hostage, including 8 women and a 3-year-old child.

Shortly after midnight, the militants' leader started the negotiations that led to the end of the ordeal at about 2 a.m. He was promised by French authorities that the four militants would receive political asylum. The next day, however, the French Government issued a statement saying that the men would have to stand trial on charges growing out of the assault, including the death of a Turkish guard.^[48]

A explosion on a Paris-Toulouse express train kills five passengers and injures 27 near Ambazac. The blast in the baggage compartment of the Capitole Express was caused by several pounds of extremely powerful explosives, intentionally planted. In 2011 Carlos the Jackal was tried for involvement in the attack and was subsequently convicted and sentenced to life in prison.^[49][50]

A powerful car bomb detonates in a crowded street in central Paris during the morning rush hour, killing a young woman and injuring 46 people. The apparent target are the offices of the Libyan newspaper Al-Watan al-Arabi. In 2011 Carlos the Jackal is tried for involvement in the attacks and is subsequently convicted and sentenced to life in prison.^[50][51]

Two assailants throw grenades into the dining room of the Chez Jo Goldenberg restaurant and fire machine guns at the patrons. Six people die, including two American tourists, and 22 others are wounded in the attack on the Jewish restaurant in Paris's Marais district.^[52][53]

A bomb, that police said was intended to target a United States diplomat, explodes on a luxurious residential street on the Left Bank near the Eiffel Tower, killing a bomb disposal expert and wounding two others. The bomb had been planted under the vehicle of Roderick Grant, commercial counselor at the United States Embassy in Paris.^[54]

A bomb detonates at the Turkish-owned Marmara Voyages tourism agency in central Paris, killing one female employee and injuring four others. The blast reportedly caused the roof of the offices to collapse.^[55][56]

A bomb explodes inside a suitcase at the Turkish Airlines check-in desk in the south terminal of the Orly Airport, sending flames through the crowd of passengers checking in for a flight to Istanbul. The bomb consisted of a half kilo of Semtex explosive connected to three portable gas bottles, which caused extensive burns on the victims. Three people were killed immediately in the blast and another five died in hospital. Four of the victims were French, two were Turkish, one was American, and one was Swedish.^[57][58][59]

At approximately 4:00 (UTC+1), two gunmen shoot to dead seven people at a Sofitel Hotel in a popular holiday town. The victims include the French consul-general for Saarbrücken in West Germany, Lucien Andre. Three other hotel guests and three employees of Sofitel were also killed after apparently being rounded up and ushered into a hotel room.^[60]

One man is killed and 26 people injured when multiple bombs destroyed the American, Soviet and Algerian pavilions at an international trade fair in Marseille. An Armenian guerrilla group took responsibility for the attack in a telephone call to the police. However then Interior Minister, Gaston Defferre, later stated that the far rightist Charles Martel Group had also taken responsibility for the blast.^[61]

A bomb explodes in the two first-class cars of an AGV locomotive as it heads north toward Paris, from the Gare de Marseille-Saint-Charles. Although the train was travelling at about 160 kilometres per hour, it does not derail. Rescue workers find 2 passengers dead and 20 wounded, 5 of them seriously.

Half an hour later a second bomb explodes in the baggage checkroom of the main hall at the Gare de Marseille-Saint-Charles, killing 2 people and wounding at least 38. In 2011 Carlos the Jackal is tried for involvement in the attacks and is subsequently convicted and sentenced to life in prison.^[50][62][63]

Gholam Ali Oveisi, a four-star general under Iran's late shah, and his brother, an ex-colonel, are killed by gunmen in central Paris. Their driver is also wounded.^[64][65]

A lone gunman shoots and kills the United Arab Emirates' ambassador to France outside the diplomat's Paris home. Khalifa Ahmed Abdel Aziz al-Mubarak is killed in a district of Paris nearby the Eiffel tower.^[66]

General René Audran, a senior official of the French Ministry of Defence, is shot to dead in front of his residence at La Celle-Saint-Cloud.^[67]

A bomb explodes at an entrance to the Paris branch of the British-owned department store Marks & Spencer as it opened for business, killing a man and wounding 15 other people. Telephone calls claiming responsibility were received from the Caribbean Revolutionary Alliance, an outlawed group seeking the independence of France's Caribbean territories; and from Direct Action, a left-wing extremist group that had announced its fusion with the Red Army Faction terrorists of Germany.^[68]

Try Meng Huot – a doctor in chemistry who had been a lecturer at the University of Paris before he became a Khmer Rouge leader – is killed in his Parisian apartment alongside his wife and another unidentified couple.^[69]

A bomb explodes in a packed mall of luxury boutiques on the Champs-Elysees, killing 2 people and wounding 28. A second bomb, found on a metro train, was defused by police demolition experts before it could explode. A terrorist organization calling itself the Committee of Solidarity With Arab and Middle Eastern Political Prisoners asserted responsibility for the attack in a handwritten letter sent to the Beirut office of a Western news agency.^[70][71]

Kenneth Marston, director of a French subsidiary of Black & Decker, is shot to death outside his home.^[72]

A bomb explodes inside the post office of the Hôtel de Ville, killing one person and wounding 18 others. The dead woman is identified as Marguerite Thuault, an employee of the post office.^[73][74]

A bomb explodes inside the Parisian police headquarters, killing one person and wounding 51 others, two seriously.^[73]

A bomb thrown from a passing car explodes in front of a Tati department store on the Left Bank, killing at least 5 people and wounding about 50. The blast, which occurred about 17:30, destroyed the entire front of the seven-story building on the rue de Rennes.^[75]

A car explodes in the seafront market place at Toulon, killing the four occupants and setting fire to a nearby building. The police said it may have been carrying explosives in preparation for a bomb attack.^[76]

A man and woman firing from a motorcycle kill the head of the French auto-maker Renault. Georges Besse is struck down by gunfire as he exited from his car, unaccompanied by bodyguards. He had been appointed chairman of the company in January 1985.^[77]

At 3:00 (UTC+1), two homemade bombs explode at a crowded hostel for mostly North African immigrant workers, killing a Romanian national and wounding at least 12 others. The first blast destroyed a number of vehicles on the street, and following this a second blast, under the main stairwell of the building, destroyed the corridor into which many residents had come to check the first blast.^[78][79]

Three police officers and a taxi driver are killed, and six other people – including two more officers – are wounded in separate shoot outs with two masked gunmen in Paris. The pair broke into a Paris police station to steal fire arms, then took a taxi driver hostage and forced him to drive them to the Bois de Vincennes park on the outskirts of Paris, where the final shoot out took place.^[80]

Eight people are killed and 150 wounded in an explosion of a gas canister packed with nails and bolts on a Paris regional train at the Gare de Saint-Michel-Notre-Dame rail station. The bombing was claimed by the Armed Islamic Group as reprisals for French support for Algeria's army-backed government.^[81][82]

A blast at 18:03 CET rips open the doors of a train on the southbound track of the Port Royal station of the regional express network on the Left Bank, scattering the wounded – totaling over 85 – over the platform. Three people succumb to injuries caused by the bomb made from a 28-pound camping gas canister filled with nails.^[83][84]

A bomb explodes beside a McDonald's in a small town in Brittany, killing a restaurant worker. The explosion, in the Dinan area, happens at about 10:00 CET, near the restaurant's drive-through window.^[85]

A parcel bomb explodes at a legal office in central Paris killing a secretary and seriously injuring a lawyer. Several other people were lightly hurt in the unclaimed blast shortly before 13:00 CET on the fourth floor of a building in the capital's fashionable eighth arrondissement or district.^[86]

A group so-called Afghan Revolutionary Front left a bundle of dynamite in the third floor restroom of the menswear department inside a department store in Paris, and sent a letter to police saying several bombs were planted in the store and that they demanded that France withdraw from Afghanistan. The first device was defused and no casualties were reported.^[87][88]

At around 14:00 CET, two uniformed soldiers were killed and a third was seriously injured outside a shopping centre in Montauban, while withdrawing money from a cash machine. They were all from the 17th Parachute Engineer Regiment (17^e Régiment du génie parachutiste), whose barracks are close to the town. Corporal Abel Chennouf, 24, and Private Mohamed Legouad, 23, both of North African origin, were killed. Corporal Loïc Liber, 28, from Guadeloupe, was left in a coma.^[89][90]

At about 8:00 CET, a man drove up to the Ozar Hatorah school on a motorcycle. He dismounted, and immediately opened fire toward the schoolyard. Four people died: 30-year-old Rabbi Jonathan (Yonatan) Sandler; his two oldest (out of three) children Aryeh, aged 6, and Gabriel, aged 3; and the head teacher's daughter, eight-year-old Miriam Monsonego, the girl shot in the head. Bryan Bijaoui, a 17-year-old Jewish boy, was gravely injured.^[91][92][93]

At about 11:30 CET, two militants armed with assault rifles and other weapons forced their way into the offices of the French satirical weekly newspaper Charlie Hebdo in Paris. They fired up to 50 shots, initially killing 11 people and injuring 11 others, and shouted "Allahu Akbar" (Arabic for "God is [the] greatest") during their attack.

At about 1:00 CET, an Islamist militant who pledged allegiance to Islamic State, enters the Hypercacher kosher superette in Porte de Vincennes and takes up to 20 Jewish patrons hostage. Four Jewish hostages die and held fifteen others are held during a siege in which Coulibaly demands that the two militants responsible for the attack on the satirical weekly newspaper Charlie Hebdo not be harmed.

At about 9:30 CEST, a suspected Islamic militant decapitates a man and drives a company van into gas cylinders at an Air Products' gas factory near Lyon. The attacker placed the head of a victim on a fence railing, and planted two Jihadist flag banners alongside it. Video surveillance footage showed that the perpetrator also tried to ignite several canisters containing flammable chemicals.

At about 17:45 CEST, a 26-year-old Moroccan national carrying a Draco automatic rifle, magazines containing 300 rounds, a semi-automatic Luger pistol, and a box cutter, opened fire on a Thalys train traveling from Amsterdam to Paris. The gunman was attacked and subdued by seven men (four Americans, including an ex-pat, a Frenchman, an American-French citizen and a Briton), who beat him unconscious. The train was diverted to Arras where the man was arrested and identified, and two victims treated. The man had been previously flagged with an "S" card, France's warning alert for someone believed to be a national security risk.^[94]

On the evening of 13 November 2015, a series of coordinated terrorist attacks comprising mass shootings and suicide bombings occurred in Paris and Saint-Denis, France. Beginning at 21:16 CET,^[95] three separate explosions and six mass shootings occurred, including bombings near the Stade de France in the northern suburb of Saint-Denis.^[95][96] The deadliest attack was at the Bataclan theatre where attackers took hostages and engaged in a standoff with police until it was ended at 00:58 CET 14 November 2015. 130 civilians were killed in the attacks.

On the evening of 14 July 2016, a vehicle-ramming attack took place in Nice, France when a man deliberately drove a cargo truck into a crowd of people celebrating Bastille Day on the Promenade des Anglais. 86 people were killed and 434 others were injured.

On 13 June 2016, a police officer and his wife, a police secretary, were stabbed to death in their home in Magnanville (about 55 km or 35 miles west of Paris) by a man acting on an "order" by ISIL to "kill infidels".

On 3 February 2017, armed with two 40-centimetre machetes a 29-year-old Egyptian terrorist attacked patrolling guards outside the Louvre museum. One of the guards was slightly injured during the attack as the perpetrator was shot dead.

On 20 April 2017, a police officer was killed and two more were injured alongside a tourist by an assailant wielding a Kalashnikov rifle on the Champs-Élysées, a shopping boulevard in Paris, France.

On 23 March 2018, a 25 year old assailant hijacked a car in Carcassonne, France, killing one. He then shot at some off duty officers and then drove to the nearby town of Trèbes where he stormed a local supermarket, killing three, including a policeman, and taking several hostage. He was later shot and killed.

A 21-year-old Chechnia-born man armed with a knife, killed one pedestrian and injured four more near the Palais Garnier, the opera house in Paris, France, before being fatally shot by police.

A 29-year-old French citizen of Algerian origin killed five civilians and wounded 11 others at a Christmas market in Strasbourg, France, before being killed in a shootout with police two days later.

A packet bomb explodes in front of a bakery in the pedestrian zone of Lyon. 13 people were wounded. A 24-year old male student from Algeria was arrested 3 days later. No group has claimed responsibility of the attack yet.

A radicalized Islamist stabbed four people to death, and injured two others at the central police headquarters in Paris. He was an administrative worker and had been recently converting to Salafist Islam. The perpetrator was shot instantly dead by other officers.

A man stabbed three people in Villejuif, a suburb of Paris, killing one person and wounding two others. The attacker was shot dead by police. The attacker was identified as Nathan Chiasson, a follower of Salafism, an extremist sect of Islam.

Two people were killed and five others wounded in a mass stabbing in Romans-sur-Isère, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, France. The suspect is a 30-year-old Sudanese asylum seeker who was arrested at the scene. French police have launched a terrorism investigation. Two other people related to the attacker were arrested later.

Three police officers were seriously injured when a driver rammed his vehicle into them in Colombes, Hauts-de-Seine. The perpetrator was arrested, and a source stated that the man carried out the attack to "avenge events in Palestine". The attacker had pledged allegiance to Islamic State.

A knife attack outside the former headquarters of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris, France, left two people wounded. The building is now used by a television production company, and the two wounded victims are workers of the company. The suspected perpetrator and six other people were taken into custody. Interior minister Gérald Darmanin said that the attack was "clearly an act of Islamist terrorism".

A teacher was beheaded near a school in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, a suburb of Paris, the attacker was shot dead by police. The victim is said to have shown controversial cartoons of Muhammad to his students. President Emmanuel Macron called the attack an "Islamist terrorist attack".

Three people were killed in a stabbing attack at Notre-Dame de Nice, a Roman Catholic basilica, in Nice, France. One of the victims, a woman, was beheaded by the attacker. Several additional victims were injured. The attacker, who was shot by the police, was taken into custody. The Mayor of Nice and police said the incident appeared to be an Islamic extremism terrorist attack.