Lunel: When this picturesque southern French town of just 25,700 people learned late last year that six local Muslims had been killed fighting for Islam in Syria, accounting for 10 per cent of the total number of French killed there, the right-wing mayor quietly asked the head of the local mosque for help.

"I need you and you need me to stop this," the mayor, Claude Arnaud, recalled telling Lahoucine Goumri, who was president of Lunel's Al Baraka mosque at the time.

A street in the city centre of Lunel, France. Six Muslims from the town have been killed fighting in Syria. Credit:New York Times

But instead of condemning the surge of young recruits, Goumri told local media that the policies of President Francois Hollande were the main culprit and complained that it was not his job to denounce the jihadis when nobody protested French citizens who travelled to Israel to help the army "kill Palestinian babies".

In the wake of last week's attacks by terrorists in and around Paris that killed 17 people, Lunel is still struggling to fathom how such a small town, nestled in the sun-splashed Languedoc wine-growing region, has come to earn its dubious distinction as a breeding ground for jihadis.