AKIPRESS.COM - French president Francois Hollande has appealed for a single coalition — including the United States and Russia — to eradicate Islamic State militants in Syria after the bloody attacks on Paris.

In a solemn address to a joint session of parliament in the Palace of Versailles that began with the words "France is at war", Mr Hollande announced an increase in police recruitment, a halt to lay-offs in the army, and a constitutional amendment to strengthen the fight against terrorism, reports ABC.

Mr Hollande said he would meet with US president Barack Obama in Washington and Russia's Vladimir Putin in Moscow the coming days "so we can unite our forces to achieve a result that has taken too long".

He also called for a United Nations Security Council meeting over the fight against Islamic State (IS) jihadists.

Hollande said the attacks in the French capital that killed 129 people as they enjoyed a Friday night out in bars, restaurants, a concert hall and the national stadium, "were acts of war".

They "were decided and planned in Syria, prepared and organised in Belgium and perpetrated on our soil with French complicity", he said.

In response, "France will intensify operations in Syria", Mr Hollande said a day after French jets pounded IS targets in the group's Syrian stronghold of Raqqa, its first military response to the Paris carnage.

"We will continue the strikes in the weeks to come," Mr Hollande told the parliament, pledging to continue to wage war "mercilessly".

While Syrian president Bashar al-Assad could not be part of the solution to the crisis, "our enemy is Daesh [Islamic State]", Mr Hollande said, while insisting that France was fighting terrorism and not another civilisation.

In the fight against the extremists, Mr Hollande said he wanted increased international assistance. "We will eradicate terrorism," he declared at the end of a 50-minute speech.