France will step up strikes in Syria where Friday's shootings and suicide bombings in Paris had been planned, President Francois Hollande said today.

In an extraordinary address to both houses of parliament, Hollande called on the United Nations Security Council to rapidly issue a resolution against terrorism.

"In the mean time, France will intensify its operations in Syria," Hollande said, describing the country as "the biggest factory of terrorists the world has known"

Hollande said  France was at war against cowards, and not in a clash of civilisations, after militant attacks killed at least 129 people in and around Paris last week.

"France is at war," Hollande told parliamentarians. "But we're not engaged in a war of civilisations, because these assassins do not represent any."

It was the first time in more than six years that a French president addressed both houses of parliament, the Senate and the National Assembly, convened in a so-called Congress at Versailles. It is a procedure reserved for constitutional revisions and major presidential speeches.

"Our democracy has triumphed before over adversaries that were much more formidable than these cowards," Hollande told the legislators in the former royal palace.

The President also said he will propose a law extending the country's state of emergency for three months.