France’s forces of law and order have repeatedly been singled out by Islamic extremists in the past three years since a state of emergency was introduced in January 2015 after the attack on Charlie Hebdo newspaper and a Jewish supermarket in Paris.
January 2015: The Kouachi brothers, who gunned down 11 people at Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris, shot a police officer in the head as they fled the scene. A day later, 25-year-old trainee police officer Clarissa Jean-Philippe was gunned down by Amédy Coulibaly who killed four people and took hostages at the Hyper Cacher Jewish supermarket in Paris before being killed in a shootout with police.
February 2015: a man with a knife attacked a group of soldiers guarding a Jewish community centre in Nice.
January 2016: A man rammed his car twice into four soldiers protecting a mosque in Valence. Jihad propaganda images were found on his computer. A few days later, a man wearing a fake explosive belt attacked police officers in the Goutte d’Or district of Paris with a meat cleaver while shouting Allahu Akbar. He was shot dead by police.
June 2016: a police officer and his partner, a police secretary, were stabbed to death at their home on the outskirts of Paris in front of their three-year-old son. Their attacker, Larossi Abballa, had been convicted of terrorist links in 2013. He was killed in a shootout with police. Islamic State claimed responsibility.
3 February 2017: a man wielding a machete in each hand attacked patrolling soldiers in the Carrousel du Louvre, shouting Allahu Akbar. The suspect, a 29-year-old Egyptian was shot and wounded.
18 March 2017: a man claiming he was “ready to die for Allah” tried to grab a gun from a soldier patrolling Orly airport before being shot dead. He had earlier shot and injured a police officer in a northern Paris suburb.
20 April 2017: Police officer Xavier Jugelé was killed while out on patrol on the Champs-Elysées. He was eating a sandwich in his police van, when Karim Cheurfi shot him in the head.
6 June 2017: An Algerian Islamist attacked a police officer with a hammer in the street in front of Notre-Dame cathedral. The man who claimed to be a “soldier of the caliphate” of IS was shot by a second police officer.
19 June 2017: A man rammed his car into a police vehicle. After he was shot dead, explosives, an assault rifle and handguns were reportedly found in his car.
9 August 2017: A man rammed his car into soldiers near their barracks at Levallois-Perret, a Paris suburb. He was tracked to a nearby motorway and arrested after a shootout.
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