France’s interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve has stated that nearly 900 French citizens have travelled to the Middle East to fight on the side of Islamist groups in Syria and Iraq and some have joined the Islamic State militias.

“There are today nearly 900 from France who are part of this phenomenon, either in the theatre of operations in Syria or in Iraq. There are presumably some in Iraq because the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, which recruited them, takes them to all the places where it is engaged in combat,” Cazeneuve told France Info radio.

Cazeneuve also announced that France has received hundreds of asylum applications from Iraqi Christians fleeing violence at the hands of the jihadists in the war-torn country.