PARIS, November 16 -- The French presidency on Thursday said it would deploy its Charles de Gaulle aircraft carrier to boost its operations against the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria.
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The presence of the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, the flagship of the French navy, will add to the six Rafale jets stationed in the United Arab Emirates and the six Mirages flying out of Jordan.

The Charles de Gaulle did a two-month stint in the Gulf from February, from where strikes against IS in Iraq were carried out, before returning to its base in the French port of Toulon.
During this time about 20 aircraft carried out 10-15 combat sorties a day, according to the army.
France launched air strikes against the jihadists in Syria in October, after a year of bombing IS in Iraq, saying it was acting in self defense.

France was hit by a jihadist attack in January that left 17 dead and has foiled several other attempted attacks. The country fears hundreds of citizens that have left to fight with IS in Iraq and Syria will return to launch attacks on home soil.

Since beginning operations in Iraq, French fighter jets have carried out 1,285 aerial missions, resulting in 271 strikes and the destruction of 459 targets.
Only two known strikes have so far been carried out in Syria.

MOSCOW, February 8 -- The leaders of Russia, France, Germany and Ukraine are expected to hold telephone negotiations on Sunday that will culminate the shuttle efforts to find a way out the Ukraine crisis that were taken at the very top level this weekend.

"Work (on the Ukraine crisis) will continue and its preliminary results will be summed up next Sunday during a summit-level telephone conversation to be held in the "Normandy format", the Russian president’s spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, said at night after the five-hour talks in the Kremlin last Friday between Russian President Vladimir Putin, French President Francois Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

The European leaders arrived in Moscow last Thursday, February 5, after consultations with Ukrainian President Pyotr Poroshenko whom they had met in Kiev.

"Judging from proposals formulated by the French president and German chancellor, the text of a possible joint document on implementation of the Minsk agreements is being in the making. The document is supposed to include proposals made by the Ukrainian president and initiatives formulated today (on Friday) and added by Russian President Vladimir Putin," the Kremlin spokesperson said adding the text and the proposals would be submitted for approval to all the sides in the Ukraine conflict.

The participants in the negotiations preferred not to elaborate on the essence of the talks or the initiatives under discussion. The Russian president also refrained from making any public assessment of the Friday consultations.


Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov who is also in Munich held a series of consultations on the Ukraine crisis, including with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and German counterpart Frank Walter Steinmeier.

In his speech at the conference, Lavrov said that Russia was ready to act as a guarantor of the future agreements between Kiev, Lugansk and Donetsk. Russia confirmed its stance that the sides in conflict should establish a direct dialogue with each other.

PARIS, January 18 -- France quietly buried on Saturday the two brothers involved in the country’s worst terror attacks in decades and banned an anti-Islamist demonstration in Paris to head off possible civil unrest.

Said Kouachi, the elder of the two brothers who together gunned down 12 people Jan. 7 in their attack on the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, was buried in the eastern city of Reims, 144 kilometers (89 miles) east of Paris.

He was buried overnight despite Reims city officials’ objections and concerns that the grave could become a shrine for extremists.

Antoine Flasaquier, a lawyer for the elder brother’s widow, said the burial took place overnight “in the greatest discretion and dignity.” Flasaquier said the widow did not attend the burial for fear she’d be followed by reporters and give away the location of the grave.

Said lived in Reims before police killed him and his brother Jan. 9. “I don’t want a grave that serves to attract fanatics. I don’t want a place that promotes hate,” Reims Mayor Arnaud Robinet said in an interview on France Info radio Thursday.

City officials say they wanted to avoid “all useless and indecent polemic” over the burial and said Kouachi would be buried in an anonymous grave “to avoid all risk of disturbance to the peace and to preserve the town’s tranquility.”

Meanwhile, a local mayor told AFP on Sunday that Cherif has been buried amid tight security outside of Paris. He was buried just before midnight Saturday at a cemetery in Gennevilliers, where he used to live, officials said. No relatives attended the funeral and the grave is unmarked.

Earlier in the week Robinet said he’d “categorically refuse” a request by Kouachi’s family to bury Said and Cherif.

Other burial
Two other terrorists killed in shootouts with police following last week’s attacks await burial.

There has been no word of plans for burying Amedy Coulibaly, who killed five people including four hostages at a kosher market in Paris before he was killed by police Jan. 9.

The debate over the burials echoed the one nearly three years ago over Mohamed Merah, who killed three Jewish schoolchildren, a rabbi and three paratroopers in Toulouse in 2012. Then-President Nicolas Sarkozy intervened to allow the burial over the objections of Toulouse's mayor.

France bans anti-Islamist protest
Also Saturday, the Paris administrative tribunal ruled that Paris police were authorized to ban an “Islamists out of France” rally planned Sunday by two groups that promote secular and republican values.

One organizing group, “Secular Riposte,” said on its Web site that it would instead hold a news conference on Sunday. Resistance Republicaine, another organizer, said it would still hold similar rallies in the southern cities of Bordeaux and Montpellier on Sunday.

PARIS, January 11 -- US President Barack Obama will not be attending an anti-terrorism unity rally in Paris to commemorate victims of the recent terrorist attacks in the French capital, Agence France-Presse reported, but did not specify why the American leader would miss the event.

Speaking on Friday in Knoxville, Tennessee, Obama expressed his solidarity with people of France and said that the United States was ready to provide any possible assistance to France to help the country overcome the consequences of terrorist attacks in Paris.

A day earlier, the US president paid a visit to the French Embassy in Washington, where he signed a book of condolences and spoke with French diplomats.

A number of European leaders expressed their readiness to join the rally in protest against Islamist terrorists’ actions. Heads of state and government from Belgium, Great Britain, Germany, Spain, Italy and Poland were among the politicians saying they would join the rally for the national unity on French President Francois Hollande’s invitation.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov will lead his country’s delegation at the march on Sunday, according to Saturday’s statement from the Russian Foreign Ministry.

Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, European Commission head Jean-Claude Juncker, European Parliament President Martin Schulz, European Union High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Federica Mogherini, and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg also announced their plans to come to the French capital. Ukrainian President Pyotr Poroshenko pledged to attend as well.

Hollande called the rally on Friday, three days after the terrorist attacks, which saw killed in Paris seventeen people, including 10 staff members of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, four hostages taken at a kosher supermarket, and three policemen. Several dozen people were injured.

On Wednesday morning, masked gunmen targeted an office of the Paris-based satirical Charlie Hebdo magazine, which had earlier published caricature images of the Prophet Muhammed. As a result of the shooting, 12 people were killed, including 10 staff members and two policemen. Another 11 people were wounded. This was the deadliest attack in France in half a century.

On Friday, a gunman took hostages at a kosher supermarket near the Porte de Vincennes in eastern Paris killing four of them. The gunman, later identified as Amedy Coulibaly, was killed by security forces.

Around 2,200 security personnel will guard the route of the march, which will run three kilometres from the historic Place de la Republique to Place de la Nation in the east of the capital, the interior minister said, with snipers stationed on rooftops.

British Prime Minister David Cameron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas were set to join, as well as Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the king and queen of Jordan.

Public transport will be free to ease access into and throughout Paris and international train operator Thalys said it was also cutting fares to the French capital on Sunday.

PARIS, January 10 -- Hayat Boumeddiene, said to be armed and dangerous, remains at large, amid plans to hold unity march in French capital.'

Boumeddiene, 26, described as "armed and dangerous", remained on the loose, police said. Boumeddiene has never been convicted of a crime, officials said, but judicial records obtained by Associated Press news agency say she was known to French internal security services, and once posed for a photo in her Islamic veil and holding a crossbow.

The records show that she was also once interrogated by French officials about her reaction to assaults committed by al-Qaeda.

"I don't have any opinion," she answered, according to the records, but immediately added that innocent people were being killed by the Americans and needed to be defended, and that information provided by the media was suspect.

In the deadliest attack in France in decades, 17 people lost their lives in three days of violence that began with an an assault on the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo on Wednesday and ended with Friday's dual hostage-taking at a print works outside Paris and a Jewish supermarket in the city.

French security forces killed Said and Cherif Kouachi, the brothers behind the 12 magazine killings, after they took refuge in the print works. Police also killed Coulibaly, an associate of the one of the Kouachi brothers, after he planted explosives at the supermarket in a siege that claimed the lives of four hostages.


AQAP claims attack

Earlier, al-Qaeda's Yemeni branch claimed responsibility for the Charlie Hebdo killings, saying the shooting was an operation to teach the French the limits of freedom of expression.

Abu Hareth al-Nezari, a senior member of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), made the claim in an audio recording published online late on Friday.

"Some French were not polite with the prophets and that was the reason why a few of the believers, who loved Allah and his prophet and loved martyrdom, went to them to teach them how to behave and how to be polite with the prophets and to teach them that the freedom of expression has limits and boundaries," Nezari says in the recording.

He also warned France it would not enjoy security unless it stopped what he called a "war" on Islam.