Military says requests for information and applications through website trebled to 1,500 a day after massacre

Applications to join the French army have soared since the Islamic State attacks on Paris, according to figures obtained by the newspaper Le Monde.

The military did not want to announce the figures during France’s three-day period of national mourning, but has now said requests for information and applications through its website had trebled from about 500 a day to about 1,500 since the 13 November attacks, the paper reported.

The series of suicide bombings and shootings at a popular music venue, the national stadium, cafes and restaurants killed 129 people from 19 countries, but most of the victims were French and many of them young, on a Friday night out.

“I’m staggered,” Col Eric de Lapresle, head of the army recruitment service’s marketing and communications department, told the paper. “This is an entirely unprecedented phenomenon.”

The French president, François Hollande, partially reversed planned military personnel cuts in the wake of January’s Charlie Hebdo attacks, which left 17 people dead, and has now frozen them entirely. As a result, De Lapresle said, the army needed 15,000 new recruits this year and 16,000 in 2016.

Applications had already jumped from around 130 a day in 2014 to 500 a day since the Charlie Hebdo attacks, and had now multiplied further. De Lapresle said the army’s five recruitment centres were also experiencing unprecedented demand.

The French army had around 115,000 personnel in 2014, some 3,000 of them deployed across Africa. In the past it has relied heavily on conscription to fill its ranks, but military service was abolished by President Jacques Chirac in 1996 and formally ended in 2001 – although young people must still register with the armed forces for possible conscription if needed.

