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At least seven people were wounded Friday by a suspected package bomb blast on a pedestrian street in the heart of Lyon, southeast France, which President Emmanuel Macron described as an "attack."

There are currently 147 reception centres across France, but these are in massive demand as desperate refugees continue to flee the Middle East. Housing minister Emmanuelle Cosse has pledged to built a further 50 centres before the end of next month in a desperate bid to ease the crisis. But she has also called on French people to open up their homes to migrants in need. Several organisations have already promised to help. The group Singa has helped 300 migrants find a temporary home since it launched its 'Calm' scheme last June. Singa co-director Alice Barbe said: "We match people...

Shortly after the latest terror attack on French soil by two ISIS "soldiers", President Francois Hollande, who was roundly disparaged 12 days ago for the country's lack of preparedness to the Nice truck terror attack which killed 84, vowed to wage war against the Islamic State "by every means". "We are confronted with a group, Daesh, which has declared war on us," Hollande said, using an alternative name for Isis. "We have to wage war, by every means, (but through) upholding the law, which is because we are a democracy."

Elderly priest, 86, is 'beheaded' by two ISIS knifemen shouting 'Allahu Akbar' after they took nuns and worshippers hostage at French church: Police shoot both attackers dead then search for bombs Priest had throat cut while another hostage is fighting for life after knifemen burst into Normandy church at 9am Reports that one of the attackers shouted 'Allahu Akbar' as they launched attack at Gambetta Church near Rouen Vatican has condemned the 'barbaric' killing of the 86-year-old priest and an anti-terror investigation is underway ISIS claim responsibility for the atrocity while Francois Hollande says France is 'at war' with the...

France has launched a groundbreaking program to educate future imams and Muslim chaplains about the country and its values. The goal: to put a French stamp on Islam, the second largest religion in France. Lisa Bryant has more from Paris. The courses are being held in an unusual location - the Catholic Institute of Paris, an institution better known for training priests and Christian scholars than Muslim clerics. Established in collaboration with the French government and the Paris mosque, the program began in January with a largely male class of 25. It aims to give the students a broad understanding...

Radical Muslims in France's housing estates are waging an undeclared "intifada" against the police, with violent clashes injuring an average of 14 officers each day.

ABIDJAN, Feb 23, 2006 (AFP) - Youssouf Fofana, suspected head of the "Gang of Barbarians" wanted for the kidnap, torture and murder of a young Jewish Frenchman near Paris, was arrested here early Thursday by Ivorian police, a source close to the inquiry told AFP. Fofana was picked up by the judiciary police in the working-class district of Abobo in the northeast of Ivory Coast's economic capital, the source said. The 25-year-old convicted petty criminal is of Ivorian origin. He styles himself -- in English -- as the "brain of barbarians" and is believed to have fled to the west...

Rowdy revelers in France torched 425 vehicles overnight in scattered New Year's Eve unrest that has become an annual problem in troubled neighborhoods, the national police chief said Sunday. Last year, 333 cars were burned. Police Chief Michel Gaudin also said there were no major clashes this year between youths and police overnight, as had been feared. In what has become an annual tradition every New Year's Eve, youths set several hundred cars ablaze in France as festivities get out of hand. Police were especially cautious this time because of the wave three weeks of rioting and car burning that...

<p>AS THE night falls, the "troubles" start — and the pattern is always the same.</p> <p>Bands of youths in balaclavas start by setting fire to parked cars, break shop windows with baseball bats, wreck public telephones and ransack cinemas, libraries and schools. When the police arrive on the scene, the rioters attack them with stones, knives and baseball bats.</p>

November 1, 2005: France is burning. For most of the last week, there have been nasty riots in the Parisian suburb of St Denis, complete with fires and many casualties. This area is home to about 500,000 Moslems. Many largely Moslem suburbs of Paris, and other large cities, have become no-go zones for the police, and anyone who is not of Middle Eastern origin. Over the last three decades, generous social benefits and immigration policies have left France with a Moslem population of some five million (about eight percent of the population.) High rise housing for them was built on...

BOBIGNY, France (Reuters) -- French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy defended his tough crime policies on Monday after a fourth night of riots in a Paris suburb in which tear gas was fired into a mosque. Sarkozy, addressing police officers, vowed to find how tear gas had been fired into the Muslim place of worship, an incident which had helped fuel the disturbances. Youths hurled rocks and set fire to cars in the northeastern Clichy-sous-Bois suburb of the French capital, where many immigrants and poor families live in high-rise housing estates notorious for youth violence. ...snip French television said six police...

Paris - An Algerian Islamist organisation, the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), has issued a call for action against France, which it describes as "enemy No 1", intelligence officials said on Tuesday. "The only way to teach France to behave is jihad and the Islamic martyr," said the group's leader, Abu Mossab Abdelwadoud, also known as Abdelmalek Dourkdal, in an internet message earlier this month. He was quoted as saying: "France is our enemy No 1, the enemy of our religion, the enemy of our community." France was mentioned 15 times in the text and the Algerian government...

PARIS (Reuters) - Suspected Islamists arrested by secret service agents in Paris this week were plotting terrorist attacks on French and foreign targets in the country, the Paris public prosecutor's office said on Friday. Anti-terrorism magistrates are to prosecute three of the 11 people detained in a series of swoops in a northern district of the French capital on Monday and Tuesday, the prosecutor's office said in a statement. The others have been released or will be shortly. "This network is suspected of drawing up plans for attacks in France against French and foreign interests," said the prosecutor's office in...