European leaders condemned Friday's "heinous" suspected Islamist attack on a gas factory in France and massacres in Tunisia and Kuwait, vowing to maintain a united front against "barbarism", reports Naharnet.
One person was decapitated near Lyon in southeastern France while in Tunisia gunmen killed at least 27 people at a beach resort and in Kuwait a suicide bombing at a mosque claimed by Islamic State jihadists killed 13.
French president François Hollande and his Tunisian counterpart Beji Caid Essebsi expressed their solidarity against the "scourge" of terrorism.
Among European Union leaders gathered for a summit in Brussels, Spanish prime minister Mariano Rajoy was one of the first to react to news of the attack in France.
"Barbarism will always be confronted by unity among democrats," he wrote in a message on Twitter.
"In this battle, all good people must be united, whatever their beliefs," he added later at a news conference.
German chancellor Angela Merkel said the attacks "show the challenges we face when it comes to fighting terrorism and Islamist extremism".
She expressed her "solidarity and sympathy" with French president François Hollande. Merkel's foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier called the attack in France a "heinous murder".
Britain's prime minister David Cameron called a meeting of a government emergency committee to discuss the attacks.
"Our hearts all go out to the victims of these appalling terrorist attacks," Cameron said, branding them the fruit of "perverted ideology".
Rajoy too said Spanish officials would hold a meeting of their anti-jihadism emergency committee in Madrid.
A severed head was pinned to the gate of the factory near Lyon and several other people were injured in what Hollande described as a "terrorist attack".
That killing came nearly six months after Islamist attacks in and around Paris that killed 17 people in January, which prompted an outpouring of international sympathy.