France to Deploy Thousands of Forces to Protect Jewish Schools and ‘Sensitive Sites’

New York Times – by Alan Cowell

PARIS — Seeking to reassure a jittery and unsettled population after last week’s terrorist attacks, the French authorities said on Monday that thousands of police officers and soldiers would be deployed to protect Jewish schools and other “sensitive sites,” in one of the country’s biggest peacetime security operations.

The defense minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian, said that 10,000 soldiers would be deployed by Tuesday evening, in what he called “the first mobilization on this scale on our territory.”  

Mr. Le Drian announced the measures after President François Hollande called an emergency meeting to fashion the government’s response to the attacks. On Sunday, dozens of world leaders joined Mr. Hollande at the front of a march in Paris attended by more than one million people and intended as a show of unity and defiance.

The military deployment reflected France’s readiness to commit its armed forces to resist Islamic militants within and beyond its borders. French aircraft have joined the American-led air campaign against militant forces in Iraq, and roughly 3,000 French soldiers are deployed in Africa in efforts to counter extremist groups in countries including Chad and Mauritania.

In addition to the military deployment, the interior minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, said on Monday that 4,700 police officers would be posted to guard the country’s 700 Jewish schools and other institutions after three days of bloodletting last week, when three assailants killed 17 people in attacks on targets including a satirical newspaper, Charlie Hebdo, and akosher supermarket.

Mr. Cazeneuve announced the new protections in an address to parents at a Jewish school south of Paris, according to French radio and news agencies.

All three attackers were killed in raids, but there is an abiding and deep concern here that “the threat is still present,” as Mr. Le Drian put it.

The prime minister, Manuel Valls, speaking to BFM television, said earlier that one of the attackers, Amedy Coulibaly, “undoubtedly” had one or more accomplices, still at large and posing a continuing threat.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/13/world/europe/france-charlie-hebdo-terrorist-attacks.html?_r=0