The attacks on the French capital are only the latest in a series of terror attacks linked to Islamist groups over the past 20 years

A wave of coordinated gun attacks and suicide bombings has killed at least 127 people and seriously wounded almost 100 at a series of venues across Paris. Here is a timeline of the most serious terrorist attacks linked to Islamist groups or individuals in the west over the past 20 years.



25 July 1995, France: A gas and nail bombing at the Saint-Michel subway station in Paris killed eight people and injured more than 150. The attack was financed and coordinated by Rachid Ramda, an Algerian with links to the Armed Islamic Group, a fundamentalist group that targeted France for its support of the regime in Algiers.

11 September 2001, US: On 11 September 2001, al-Qaida terrorists hijacked four passenger jets on the east coast of the US and deliberately flew two of them into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in Manhattan and another hit the Pentagon in Virginia. The fourth plane never reached its intended target, crashing in Pennsylvania. These acts killed almost 3,000 people.

11 March 2004, Spain: A series of bombs exploded in a coordinated attack on four commuter trains in the Spanish capital, Madrid, which killed 192 people and wounded more than 1,800. An Islamist group with links to al-Qaida was blamed for the attack. Twenty-one people, mostly Moroccans, were convicted of involvement in the attack, which was the deadliest in Europe since Pan Am Flight 103 blew up over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988.

2 November 2004, the Netherlands: Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh, a strong critic of fundamentalist Islam, was shot, stabbed and slashed across the throat while cycling through Amsterdam. Dutch-Moroccan Muslim Mohammed Bouyeri was later sentenced to life imprisonment for the film-maker’s murder, which a Dutch court ruled was a terrorist attack.

7 July 2005, UK: Four suicide bombers with explosives in rucksacks attacked tube trains and a bus in central London, killing 52 rush-hour commuters and injuring hundreds more. It was the worst single terrorist atrocity on British soil. The killers were later identified as British al-Qaida sympathisers Shehzad Tanweer, Hasib Hussain, Mohammed Sidique Khan and Jermaine Lindsay.

March 2012, France: Mohamed Merah, who espoused radical Islam and said he had links to al-Qaida, killed three Jewish schoolchildren, a rabbi and three French paratroopers in a series of point-blank shootings in and around the southern town of Toulouse. Merah was shot dead after a standoff with police.

22 May 2013, UK: British-born Muslim converts Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale murdered British soldier Lee Rigby in an al-Qaida-inspired terrorist attack outside Woolwich army barracks in south London. The pair ran over Rigby before they stabbed him and tried to hack off his head with a meat cleaver. They both claimed that they were “soldiers of Allah” and motivated by the plight of Muslims abroad to carry out the killing.

24 May 2014, Belgium: A gunman murdered four people in an attack at the Jewish Museum of Belgium in the centre of Brussels. Mehdi Nemmouche, a French national who had spent a year fighting with Islamists in Syria, was arrested and charged with the killings. The victims were two Israeli tourists, a French female volunteer and a Belgian employee of the museum.

22 October 2014, Canada: Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, a petty criminal, shot and fatally wounded a soldier at the National War Memorial in Ottawa. The gunman, who had recently applied for a passport and apparently claimed he wanted to travel to Libya, then stormed into Canada’s parliament where he was shot dead.

15 December 2014, Australia: Police shot dead gunman Man Haron Monis, an Iranian-born immigrant who claimed to be a supporter of Islamic State, following a 17-hour siege at a Sydney cafe. Two hostages – a 34-year-old man and a 38-year-old woman – were also killed in the ensuing police raid.

7 January 2015, France: Masked gunmen shot dead 12 people at the Paris office of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. Four of the magazine’s cartoonists, including its editor, were among those killed, as well as two police officers. Brothers Said and Chérif Kouachi, who had attended militant training camps in Yemen, were shot dead in a standoff with the gendarmerie near Charles de Gaulle airport.

9 January 2015, France: Gunman Amedy Coulibaly killed four people, including a policewoman, in a kosher supermarket in Paris and took others hostage. In a video released after his death, Coulibaly pledged allegiance to Islamic State and said he had coordinated his attack with the Kouachi brothers.

14 February 2015, Denmark: Omar el-Hussein killed two people and wounded five others in two attacks at a cultural centre and synagogue in Copenhagen. The gunman, a radicalised petty criminal, was killed by police in an exchange of fire after the worst attack on Danish soil for decades.

14 November 2015, Paris: A wave of coordinated gun attacks and suicide bombings killed at least 127 people and seriously wounded almost 100 at a series of venues across Paris. Eight assailants have been killed, seven of them in suicide bombings, a French prosecutor has said., but police are still hunting accomplices. The French president, François Hollande, has blamed Islamic State for the massacre and a state of emergency has been declared across France.