Alwaght-The French government has dismantled some 15 terrorist networks as part of a sweeping campaign to uproot terrorism within the country, France’s justice minister says, according to Press TV.
International action is vital to combat the increase in terrorist attacks following the January terrorist attacks in France, including on the headquarters of Charlie Hebdo weekly and a supermarket, that killed 17 people, as well as the three gunmen involved in the attacks, Christiane Taubira told an open meeting of the UN Security Council’s Counter-Terrorism Committee on Tuesday.
She said the French government is examining the terrorist groups’ sophisticated propaganda, indoctrination and methods used to recruit new members, including social media and video games.
Last November, France’s Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said the number of French nationals leaving the country to join the ISIL militant group in Syria and Iraq shows an 82-percent rise in 2014.
He had also said in August 2014 that some 900 French citizens are fighting in Middle East conflicts and some have joined the ISIL militants.
Security officials in Europe fear that European citizens who have joined the terrorist groups in the Middle East will use their combat skills against their homeland upon returning home.
The ISIL terrorists currently control parts of Syria and Iraq. They have carried out heinous crimes in the two countries, including mass executions and beheadings of people.
Since 2011, when the militancy began in Syria, Western countries and their regional allies, such as Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey, have been giving financial, logistical and military support to the militant groups fighting to overthrow the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Gradually, however, some of the regional and Western sponsors of the militants began to see the repercussions of their policies as the militants turned their guns against their sponsors. One of the suspected gunmen in the Paris attack, for instance, purportedly pledged allegiance to the ISIL in a video that emerged after he was killed by security forces.
