President Hollande says France to step up anti-IS bombing after attacks

US President Barack Obama and his French counterpart Francois Hollande would meet at the White House here on November 24 to discuss the strategy against the Islamic State group following the Paris terrorist attacks.

French President François Hollande announced during a rare appearance before both Houses of the French Parliament at the Palace of Versailles that “France is at war”.

A US-led coalition has been bombing Islamic State for more than a year.

A spokesperson for France’s military command told Reuters news agency the warplanes struck a command centre and a recruitment centre for fighters in Raqqa on Tuesday.

Hollande added that the French government will discontinue French citizenship of dual citizens suspected of terrorism.

“Terrorism will not destroy France, because France will destroy it”, he stated at the end of his speech. His long and solemn speech culminated in a rendition by lawmakers of the Marseillaise, the French national anthem.

Additional security spending would be needed and France would not let European Union budget rules to get in the way, Mr Hollande said.

He said he would invoke a mutual defence clause in the EU’s Lisbon treaty, which requires member states to give each other assistance if they come under attack.

He also proposed the French constitution to be amended for crisis situations.

After a series of coordinated terrorist attacks left 129 dead in Paris Friday, Hollande immediately declared a state of emergency, based on a rarely used 1955 law that allows the state to conduct warrantless searches of private property, impose curfews, restrict public gatherings and movements of people, confiscate weapons at will and take over the press.