Security top of French agenda

PRESIDENT Francois Hollande was due this morning to hold a crisis meeting with leading cabinet ministers to discuss security in France in the aftermath of the deadliest terrorist attack in France in 50 years that left at least 20 people dead.

Senior security officials were also invited to the Elysee Palace to face serious questions as to how the terrorists were able to slip through intelligence services’ net and carry out their attacks, which started on Wednesday with the massacre at the Paris offices of satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, in which 12 were killed.

A young police officer was gunned down as she attended the scene of a traffic accident on Thursday morning and four shoppers were murdered at a kosher food store on Friday afternoon before elite anti-terror police brought simultaneous sieges in Dammartin-en-Goele and Paris to a dramatic and decisive end.

The attackers were known to security forces. Security officials have reportedly said that French-born brothers Chérif Kouachi, 32, and Saïd Kouachi, 34, were under police surveillance and were on European and US "no-fly" lists.

Chérif also had ties with 32-year-old Amedy Coulibaly, who carried out the assault on the kosher food store in Vincennes and who has been linked to the murder of the police officer a day earlier.

The Kouachi brothers, suspected of carrying out the attack on the Charlie Hebdo offices, and Coulibaly all died when police brought the sieges to an end - but a suspected accomplice of the latter is said to be still at large.

The atrocities provoked a huge outpouring of emotion in France and beyond. Cartoonists across the world drew their defiance in the hours after the first attack. Yesterday, an estimated 3.7million people took part in solidarity marches across the country. The Paris march was declared the biggest in French history, with about 2million marchers taking to the streets of the capital.

Last week, Prime Minister Manuel Valls acknowledged “failings” in intelligence and also promised “new measures to respond to terrorism”.

Those measures were expected to be discussed at today’s crisis meeting, with Mr Valls expected to announce further details to the National Assembly tomorrow.

This morning, in an interview on BFMTV, he revealed a number of options.

He said that security services’ ability to intercept communications and eavesdrop on the conversations of potential terrorists could be “improved”, though he admitted there may be legal issues to overcome.

He also said that radical Islamist prisoners in French jails should be more routinely isolated from other inmates.

In the meantime, the terror threat will be "maintained at the highest level," Mr Valls said, adding: "We have already deployed 2,000 extra soldiers, and in the coming days, we will deploy 6,000 more to support the police.”

Meanwhile, interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve has revealed that nearly 5,000 police and soldiers will be deployed to protect the country’s 700 Jewish schools - confirming a pledge President Hollande made yesterday.

Mr Cazeneuve was speaking to parents of children at a Jewish school to the south of Paris, near the scene of the murder of the police officer on Thursday.

Flags on public buildings in France are no longer at half mast today.

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Photo: Screengrab BFMTV