Here is a rundown of previous major attacks.
May 20, 1978: Palestinian militants open fire at Orly airport south of Paris, targeting passengers for a flight to Tel Aviv. Eight people die, including three gunmen, two police officers and three passengers.
October 3, 1980: A bomb explodes in front of a Paris synagogue, killing four people and wounding some 20.
March 29, 1982: An attack on a train between Toulouse and Paris on which then Paris mayor Jacques Chirac was supposed to travel kills five people and wounds 77. International terrorist Carlos is suspected of involvement.
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July 15, 1983: A bomb explodes at the Turkish Airlines counter at Orly airport, killing eight and wounding 54. Three Armenian nationals are convicted of the attack in March 1985.
December 31, 1983: Two people die and 34 are wounded when a bomb explodes at the Saint Charles train station in Marseille, southern France. A few minutes earlier, another bomb on a high-speed train travelling between Paris and Marseille kills three people. Both attacks are claimed by an Arab group linked to Carlos.
July 25, 1995: A bomb in an RER express commuter train explodes at the Saint Michel metro station in Paris, killing eight people and wounding 119. It is the worst of nine attacks generally attributed to Algerian extremists that killed a total of eight people and wounded more than 200 that summer.
December 3, 1996: Another bomb explodes along the same RER line, one station away at Port Royal, killing four people and wounding 91. Carried out using gas canisters, the attack is similar to the wave of attacks in 1995.
March 11, 2012: On March 11 and 15, Mohamed Merah, 23, shoots three soldiers dead in Toulouse, and Montauban, southern France, before killing three students and a teacher at a Jewish school in Toulouse on the 19th.
Merah is killed on March 22 in a shootout following the siege of his apartment by French police.