A horrified France was grappling with a new reality on Thursday in which hundreds of its citizens are openly joining militant groups and directly calling for attacks on their homeland.
A new video from the Islamic State group released on militant forums and Twitter on Wednesday showed three Kalashnikov-wielding Frenchmen burning their passports and calling on Muslims to join them or stage attacks in France.
The new video explicitly calls for retaliation against France for launching air strikes against the Islamic State group, which has seized large parts of Syria and Iraq.
It follows the appearance of two other French militants — identified as 22-year-olds Maxime Hauchard and Mickael Dos Santos — in a brutal IS execution video released at the weekend.
Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian announced on Wednesday that France would step up its campaign against the militants, sending six Mirage fighter jets to Jordan in December.
France currently has nine Rafale jets based in the more distant United Arab Emirates as part of a US-led international campaign to provide air support to Iraqi and Kurdish forces fighting the group.
Its most recent strikes, Le Drian said, targeted trenches used by IS fighters around the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk on Tuesday.
But France is increasingly looking inwards as it reels from the news that over 1,000 people from a wide range of backgrounds have left to join the militants in Iraq and Syria, with 375 currently there.
