PARIS // French security forces have raided a small southern town that is known as a centre for the militant recruiting networks that have sent hundreds of French youths to fight in Syria and Iraq.
The raid in the town of Lunel began around dawn on Tuesday. At least six young people from the town of about 27,000 have died in Iraq and Syria in recent months. This out of the around 20 who left to join extremist fighters.
In December, the head of the local Muslim union, who also manages a mosque there, refused to condemn the departures.
French officials did not immediately have the number of people arrested in Lunel.
The French government says 3,000 of its citizens have links to extremist fighters in Iraq and Syria, including both ISIL and its rival the Al Nusra Front. Security officials in France have grown increasingly tense, especially since the January 7-9 terror attacks in Paris that left 20 people dead, including three gunmen.
One of those gunmen claimed allegiance to ISIL in a posthumous video. Another had ties to a network that sent Frenchmen to Iraq to fight American forces during the war, and his brother was reportedly trained by Al Qaeda's Yemen branch.
* Associated Press
