France steps up attacks, raids across ISIS sites

France has also stepped up vigilance. Police and state governments have been asked to beef up security at all foreign embassies and consulates and consulates in different cities across the country. Security forces were also asked to keep a tight vigil at airports, railway stations, bus terminus, markets and religious places.

Authorities in France and Belgium carried out over 128 raids and stepped up the hunt for more gunmen and accomplices to the attacks and suicide bombings on bars, restaurants and a sports stadium in Paris that killed 129 people on Friday night.

Francois Hollande, France’s President said the French aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle would be deployed to the eastern Mediterranean to triple France’s capacity to take action against IS in Syria. Meanwhile, US Secretary of State John Kerry described those behind the massacre as “psychopathic monsters”. “This is not a clash of civilisations. These terrorists have declared war against all civilisation,” said Kerry Monday as he arrived in France to meet President Francois Hollande.

Investigators believe Belgian jihadist Abdelhamid Abaaoud, based in Syria, was the mastermind of the attacks. “We don’t know if there are accomplices in Belgium and in France...we still don’t know the number of people involved in the attacks,” Prime Minister Manuel Valls said on France Inter radio.

French police carried out 128 raids targeting extremist networks across the country Tuesday morning, according to Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve. He said more than 100 people had been placed under house arrest and 23 arrested.

Meanwhile French warplanes destroyed a command centre and training centre in the Syrian city of Raqa, the stronghold of IS, in its second series of airstrikes in 24 hours, the defence ministry said. President Hollande has vowed to hit back at IS “without mercy”.