Jihadists (illustration)
Jihadists (illustration)iStock

The risk of terror attacks in France remains extremely high, the country’s Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said on Monday, adding that over 8,000 people were on a national warning list of Islamist radicalization.

The threat "remains extremely high in the country," Darmanin said in a speech during a visit to France's internal security service the DGSI, according to the AFP news agency.

"The risk of terror of Sunni origin is the main threat that our country is facing," he added, promising a fight "without let-up".

Darmanin said that 8,132 individuals had been registered on France's database of suspected Islamist radicals considered to be a potential security threat.

His comments come two days before the start of the trial of 14 people over alleged involvement in attacks in January 2015 including on the Charlie Hebdo weekly that heralded a wave of attacks in France.

The alleged accomplices in the January 7-9, 2015 jihadist attacks on the Charlie Hebdo satirical weekly, a French policewoman and a Jewish supermarket go on trial in Paris on Wednesday.

12 people, including some of France's most celebrated cartoonists, were killed on Jan 7, 2015, when brothers Said and Cherif Kouachi went on a gun rampage at the offices of Charlie Hebdo.

The Kouachi brothers were shot dead by police two days after the attack in front of a printing factory in the town of Dammartin-en-Goele, outside Paris.

A day later, Amedy Coulibaly, an associate of the Kouachi brothers, killed a policewoman outside Paris and four people during a hostage-taking at the Hyper Cacher kosher supermarket. He too was killed in shootouts with police.

While the three perpetrators are dead, suspects accused of providing them with various degrees of logistical support will finally face justice.

Of the 14 suspects, three are being tried in absentia. All three are believed to have travelled to the area of northern Syria and Iraq that at the time was under Islamic State (ISIS) control.

Since the Charlie Hebdo and Hyper Cacher attacks, France has been hit by a number of attacks claimed by ISIS, the biggest one being the attack in November of 2015 in which 129 people were murdered.

The country has been under a heightened alert in recent years in the wake of the attacks.