Friday’s attack in Paris is the latest in a series of terror strikes the country has witnessed this year. The first was the attack on the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and ever since then the country has been on the hitlist of terrorists.
>> January 7, 2015: Charlie Hebdo shooting
The Paris offices of French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, which had published cartoons of Prophet Mohammed, were stormed by two gun-wielding brothers, Said and Cherif Kouachi. They killed 11 people -- including the cartoonists who the attackers had singled out by name. While fleeing the spot, they also killed a police officer, who was lying on the sidewalk as his patrol car was fired upon by them.
The attack was claimed by Al Qaeda’s Yemen branch. The two attackers were French citizens. They were later traced to a signage company in Dammartin-en-Goele, on the outskirts of Paris, where the held several hostages. On January 9, police shot the two brothers dead and released the hostages.
>> January 8: Gunman kills cop
Just a day after the Charlie Hebdo incident, while the French police was still hunting for the two attackers, a police officer was killed and a street sweeper injured in a shooting in southern Paris.
>> January 9: Kosher grocery siege
As the police tracked the two Hebdo attackers down to the area northeast of Paris, a gunman took over a kosher grocery in Porte de Vincennes, just outside the city, killing four as he entered. He announced that he would kill other hostages if the police moved against the suspects in the Hebdo attack. A few minutes after shooting the Kouachi brothers dead, police rushed into the grocery and killed that gunman, identified as Amedy Coulibaly. He was also identified to be the same man who had killed a police officer a day earlier.
>> June 26: Beheading at US-owned factory by suspected IS man
A French lorry driver, who was once placed on a ‘radicalisation list’, decapitated his boss before ramming his vehicle into a US-owned chemical plant near Lyon. It was reported later that the attack was carried out with a ‘terrorist motive’ and the attacker, 35-year-old Yaccine Salhi, had links to the Islamic State group.
>> August 21: Train attack
Ayoub El-Khazzani, a young Moroccan armed with a Kalashnikov and a knife, tried to attack passengers aboard a Paris-bound high-speed train. However, three American friends, Anthony Sadler, Spencer Stone and Alek Skarlatos -- of whom two were former US servicemen -- sprang into action and subdued him. However, Stone was stabbed but he recovered from his wounds soon. The trio was honored with the Legion of Honor from French President Francois Hollande, and President Obama thanked them personally. The attacker told the investigators that he watched a jihadi video on his phone just before the incident.
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