Summary Security stepped up as Defence Minister admitted that the authorities were monitoring militants.
PARIS: France was in a state of high alert on Sunday as military action against radicals in Mali and Somalia triggered fears of a backlash on home soil.
Armed troops patrolled rail and subway stations in Paris and security around airports and public buildings was stepped up as Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian admitted that the authorities were monitoring suspected militants based in France.
"The terrorist danger is permanent, it is not a new thing," Le Drian said. "But we have to be very careful and take every precaution necessary in what is a very sensitive situation."
Le Drian acknowledged there were radicals based in France who are thought capable of becoming involved in terrorist actions, but he stressed that these individuals were subject to tight surveillance. The existence of a home-grown Islamist threat in France became clear last year when Mohamed Merah went on a shooting spree in and around the southern city of Toulouse, killing three French paratroopers, a Rabbi and three Jewish schoolchildren before being killed himself in a police siege.
The Merah killings were followed by the dismantling, in October, of a suspected Islamist "terrorist cell" that prosecutors described as the most serious internal threat the country has faced since the Algerian-based GIA carried out a string of deadly bombings in the 1990s. It was a splinter group of the GIA that evolved into what is now known as Al Qaeda in the Maghreb, the main organisation pulling the strings in northern Mali.
The increased security came as French warplanes bombarded Islamists in central Mali for a third day and in the aftermath of a botched commando raid in Somalia to free a French intelligence agent held there since 2009.
One French soldier died in the operation, another is missing presumed dead and the Paris authorities have also said they believe the hostage, named has been killed.
At least 17 Islamist guerillas were killed in the operation, according to French sources, and witnesses said at least eight civilians were caught in the crossfire.
In Mali, the army claimed that up to 100 Islamist fighters were killed during the liberation of the central town of Konna on Friday.
Ansar Dine, one of the Islamist groups which controls the north of Mali, and the Shebab, Al Qaeda s local franchise in Somalia, have both warned that France will face retaliation over these deaths.
"In the end, it will be the French citizens who will inevitably taste the bitter consequences of their government s devil-may-care attitude towards hostages," Shebab said in a statement. Despite the failure of the Somalia mission, President Francois Hollande s actions there and in Mali have so far been backed by other mainstream political leaders.
Former Prime Minister Dominique Villepin did however strike a dissenting note on Sunday when he warned that the operation in Mali was destined to fail because Paris had not clearly established what it was trying to achieve in its former colony.
"The gung-ho unanimity in favour of war and the deja vu arguments about a war on terror worry me," he wrote in the Journal du Dimanche, adding: "Only a political process will bring peace to Mali."
