PARIS
About 80 French nationals and residents are believed to have been killed in conflict zones such as Syria and Iraq, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls has said.
Valls said in an interview with French radio Europe 1 on Monday that the phenomenon of foreign fighters "does not exist just in France".
He said: "French government has identified nearly 1,400 French - nationals or residents - involved in fighting."
"About 750 are either staying, or have stayed, in those conflict zones; among them 410 are on the spot, 260 have left and 80 were killed."
More than 13,000 fighters from more than 80 countries have joined the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, or ISIL, and other militant groups in Syria and Iraq, according to the UN.
Turkey's Ambassador to France, Hakki Akil, told The Anadolu Agency in an interview in Paris last week that Turkey had expelled 40 French nationals suspected of terrorism to France.
Akil said Turkey had received information on about 10,000 people suspected of terrorism and had expelled around 1,200.
EU leaders are due to discuss plans to combat terrorism at a summit in Brussels on Feb. 12, following the attacks in early January on the office of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and a Jewish supermarket in Paris, in which 17 people were killed.
