France mobilises 10,000 troops at home after Paris shootings

A French flags is seen as police patrol outside the the Hyper Cacher kosher supermarket, where four people were killed during a terror attack on Friday near the Porte de Vincennes in eastern Paris, January 12, 2015. [Photo/Agencies]

The three days of bloodshed ended on Friday with a siege at a Jewish deli in Paris where four hostages and another gunman were killed. That gunman declared allegiance to Islamic State and said he was acting in response to French military deployments against militant Islamist groups overseas.

Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said 4,700 police officers would be placed at all 717 Jewish schools across the country in addition to some 4,100 gendarmes already deployed.

"Synagogues, Jewish schools, but also mosques will be protected because in the past few days there have been a number of attacks against mosques," Prime Minister Manuel Valls told BFM TV.

France has the European Union's largest Muslim and Jewish communities.

The first two attackers, brothers Cherif and Said Kouachi who travelled to Yemen in 2011 for training, were killed on Friday after a siege northeast of the capital. Police said all three men were part of the same Paris-based Islamist cell.

The French Justice Ministry said Cherif Kouachi had made the journey to Yemen even though he had been banned from leaving France at the time.

Kouachi was detained from May to October 2010 on suspicion of being part of a group that tried to help Smain Ali Belkacem, author of a 1995 attack on the Paris transport system that killed eight people and wounded 120, to break out of prison.

On his release, Kouachi was placed under judicial control, which forbade him from leaving France, Justice Ministry spokesman Pierre Rance said. The case against Kouachi was eventually dropped.