The French government is to deploy almost 5,000 security forces and police to protect the 700 Jewish schools across the country following last week’s attacks.

France’s interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve announced today that he would be posting soldiers and police officers to schools to try to allay fears after a Jewish kosher supermarket was targeted on Friday.

Mr Cazeneuve addressed parents at a Jewish school south of Paris, near where one of the Islamist gunmen shot and killed a female police officer on Thursday afternoon.

The officer was one of 17 killed in last week’s violence, which began when two gunmen, brothers Saïd and Chérif Kouachi, stormed the offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, killing 12 people.

Amedy Coulibaly went on a separate rampage, shooting dead a policewoman in southern Paris before killing four Jewish shoppers who he had taken hostage on Friday evening.

Back in 2012, a Jewish school in Toulouse was targeted by a lone gunman who shot and killed a teacher and three pupils in an anti-Semitic attack.

The killer, Mohammed Merah, who was of Algerian decent, opened fire on the Ozar Hatorah Jewish day school, in the north east of the city, killing four and seriously injuring another.

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