PARIS: Deadly shootings by homegrown extremists have cast a light on France’s “geographical, social and ethnic apartheid,” Prime Minister Manuel Valls said on Tuesday in one of the starkest indictments of French society by a government figure.

The attacks on satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo and a Jewish supermarket in Paris have plunged France into a soul-searching debate to assess how the three gunmen were radicalized and how to prevent a repeat of violence that claimed 17 victims.

“These last few days have underscored a lot of evil that is gnawing at our country and challenges we must be equal to,” Valls said at a New Year’s address to the media.

“We have to look at all the divisions, the tensions that have been going on for years ... the neglect of the suburbs, the ghettos, the social misery,” he said. “A geographical, social and ethnic apartheid has established itself in our country.”

The mayor of the southern French town of Beziers said Tuesday five Chechens were arrested, including one with a cache of explosives.

In Sofia, a Bulgarian court agreed to extradite a French national with alleged links to the terrorists who carried out the attack against Charlie Hebdo newspaper. Twenty-nine-year-old Fritz-Joly Joachin confirmed on Tuesday before the district court in the southern city of Haskovo that he is prepared to be returned to his home country.

Meanwhile, four men appeared before a judge in France on Tuesday to face possible charges of providing support to one of the Paris attackers, the prosecutors’ office said.

The four men, aged 22, 25, 26 and 28, were among 12 people detained in police raids on Friday, a week after the jihadist attacks that left 17 people dead in and around Paris over the space of three days.

Three of the women detained in the raids were freed on Saturday and five people were released overnight Tuesday, the Paris prosecutors’ office said.

The remaining four will face an anti-terrorist judge who will decide whether to charge them with providing logistical support to one of the Paris attackers, Amedy Coulibaly.

Coulibaly took hostages at a kosher supermarket in eastern Paris on January 9 in a raid that left four dead. He is also suspected of shooting dead a policewoman the previous day just outside southern Paris.

He claimed to have acted in concert with Cherif and Said Kouachi, brothers who began the three days of Paris attacks on January 7 when they burst into the offices of the Charlie Hebdo satirical weekly, mowing down 12 people in revenge for blasphemous cartoons.

The Paris attacks deeply shocked the country, prompting several million to pour onto the streets for rallies, and sparked an outpouring of international support for France.