US, France “ready” to escalate military offensive against IS

“We’re absolutely committed to increasing our efforts”, Kerry said on Tuesday to reporters after he met with Hollande at the Elysee palace in Paris.

They were the second wave of airstrikes by France against IS after attacks killed at least 129 people around Paris on Friday. But he says “we know they want it, and are doing their best to build it”.

Police spokesman Werner Schneider said the trio were arrested Tuesday morning by a SWAT team outside a job center in Alsdorf, just northeast of Aachen and near the border with Belgium and the Netherlands.

“We must combine our forces to achieve a result that is already too late in coming”, Hollande reportedly said.

Meanwhile, French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said Tuesday that authorities carried out 128 raids overnight.

Hollande said the “acts of war” were decided and planned in Syria, which he said was “the biggest factory of terrorism the world has ever known and the worldwide community is still too divided and too incoherent”.

France’s prime minister says a few of the victims have not yet been identified, as police in several countries continue to search for those involved in last week’s attacks. “We agreed to exchange more information and I’m convinced that over the course of the next weeks, (the Islamic State)will feel greater pressure”.

The president pledged that assaults by French fighter jets would intensify and he would meet President Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin in talks aimed at building a coalition to defeat IS.

People react in front of the Paris morgue, in Paris, France, …

France is demanding security aid and assistance from the European Union in the wake of the Paris attacks and has triggered a never-before-used article in the EU’s treaties to secure it.

Standing outside the U.S. embassy on Monday, Mr Kerry called France America’s oldest friend and first ally, and said the only response to the attacks must be a fierce sense of solidarity.

Hollande also expressed his wish to extend the current state of emergency status in the country to three months and invited parliamentarians to vote on the bill by the end of the week.