France has a lengthy history of terrorist attacks carried out by a variety of groups from the extreme right, extreme left, extreme
Basque,
Breton,
Savoy and
Corsican nationalists,
Algerian insurgent groups and
Islamist extremists. Most of the attacks have been bombings utilising
improvised explosive devices (IEDs).
Anarchists carried out a series of bombings and assassination attempts in the 19th century. A number of attacks associated with the
Algerian War took place in the 1950s and 1960s, including the deadliest terrorist attack in France in the 20th century, the
1961 Vitry-Le-François train bombing carried out by the pro-colonialist French nationalist
Organisation armée secrète. Various Middle Eastern factions carried out shootings and bombings in the 1970s and 1980s, mainly in Paris, while during the
Algerian Civil War of the 1990s, insurgents associated with the
Armed Islamic Group (GIA) carried out a series of major attacks against the
Paris public transport system. Nationalist extremists from the Basque, Breton and Corsican communities carried out a number of assassinations and targeted bomb attacks in the 1990s and 2000s. Islamist extremists have carried out numerous attacks in the 2010s, of which the
November 2015 Paris attacks have been the bloodiest to date. Although 2015 has been the deadliest year so far in terms of fatalities caused by terrorist attacks, the number of separate terrorist attacks in previous years has been far higher. The highest number of attacks recorded in a single year was 270 in 1996, largely carried out by Algerian Civil War insurgents. The last year without any recorded terrorist attacks was 1971. ==List of incidents==