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Michel Clement/AFP/Getty Images
Friday’s deadly series of attacks in Paris, including the bombing of a bar and massacre at a concert hall, was simply the latest incident in a grim tradition of politically motivated attacks on civilians in the French capital. Long before the 1993 and 2001 attacks on New York City’s World Trade Center, the French capital had been a premier target of groups looking to press their case through violence.
In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Algeria’s National Liberation Front conducted bombing attacks on French policemen in Paris in retaliation for French repression in Algeria and as part of their struggle for independence. But the City of Light also became a target for attacks unrelated to France’s colonial legacy.
In the 1970s and '80s, the high-profile Venezuelan leftist Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine better known in the media as “Carlos the Jackal,” organized a spree of attacks in Paris. Those included car-bomb attacks on French newspapers accused of having a pro-Israel bent, as well as on a Libyan newspaper; a grenade attack at a restaurant that killed two people and injured dozens of others; two separate bombings of France’s TGV trains that killed a total of eight people; and two failed attacks on Israeli El Al airplanes at Orly Airport outside of Paris. (Ramírez Sánchez was arrested in Sudan in 1994, and is currently serving a life sentence in a Paris prison.)
Paris airports would remain a target for other extremist groups. In 1978, three gunmen and one police officer were killed after the gunmen opened fire on El Al passengers in the departure lounge at Orly Airport.
Five years later, a bomb attack by Armenian group, ASALA, at the Turkish Airlines counter at the same airport killed eight people and injuring more than 50.
Events in Algeria brought more violence to Paris in the 1990s, after a French-backed military government in Algiers canceled national elections in 1991 that looked set to be won by the Islamic Salvation Front. The resulting crackdown saw a campaign of violence by the Armed Islamic Group (GIA)
In 1994, members of the GIA hijacked a plane in Algiers with the intention of crashing it into the Eiffel Tower. The plane stopped to refuel in Marseille, however, where it was stormed by French special forces who killed all the hijackers.
Throughout the following year, Paris and Lyon came under sustained attack by the GIA. Seven bombings on targets including the iconic Arc de Triomphe, train stations and railway lines and a Jewish school claimed eight lives, and wounded dozens more people.
In January 2015, two gunmen affiliated with Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) attacked the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, killing 12 people, including much of the weekly's editorial staff and three police officers.
The assault on Charlie Hebdo was the beginning of three days of violence in the French capital, as a third gunman, in apparent coordination with the other attackers, shot and killed a policewoman and took several hostages at a kosher grocery store. All three gunmen were eventually killed by French security forces; four hostages were also killed in a police raid on the grocery store.
As a result, Paris’ public spaces typically see a strong presence by armed, uniformed military and paramilitary personnel. But as mindful as the French authorities are of the danger, Friday's attacks were a reminder that the vast metropolis offers scores of targets of opportunity to extremist groups.
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