French president calls for coalition to ‘fight terrorist army’ and dispatches aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle to eastern Mediterranean
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.
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.”
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.
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”.
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.
Read more:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/16/france-intensify-airstrikes-isis-syria-francois-hollande