LONDON: Redouane Lakdim, claiming Daesh allegiances, killed at least three people before being shot dead by police near the tourist town of Carcassonne in southwest France on Friday. Here is a chronology of the major terror attacks that have resulted in the deaths of more than 240 people across France since the 2015 Charlie Hebdo shootings.
January 7-9 2015: Said and Cherif Kouachi, 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 Amedy Coulibaly 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 Daesh.
February 3 2015: A knife-wielding man attacks three soldiers guarding a Jewish community center 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.
April 19 2015: 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 Daesh-related documents at his home, and that he had been in touch with a suspected extremist in Syria about an attack on a church.
June 26 2015: Frenchman Yassin Salhi, 35, kills and beheads his boss and displays the severed head, surrounded by two Daesh flags, on the fence of a gas plant in Saint-Quentin-Fallavier in southeastern France. He tries to blow up the factory, but is arrested. He commits suicide in his jail cell.
August 21 2015: Passengers prevent a bloodbath on a high-speed Thalys train from Amsterdam to Paris, tackling a man who opened fire on travelers. 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 Daesh.
November 13 2015: France is hit by the worst terror attacks in its history. Daesh 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.
June 13 2016: 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 on behalf of Daesh.
July 14 2016: A Tunisian plows 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. Daesh claims responsibility.
July 26 2016: 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. Abdel Malik Petitjean and Adel Kermiche, both aged 19, are killed by police. The murder is claimed by Daesh. The teenagers had sworn allegiance to the group in a video.
April 20 2017: 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 Daesh is found next to his body, with the group claiming responsibility.
October 1 2017: 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 Daesh.
