The deadly attack on Kurds in Paris last week has highlighted the long plight of the non-Arab ethnic group of between 25 and 35 million people who remain stateless. 

The Kurds inhabit largely mountainous regions across southeastern Turkey through northern Syria and Iraq to central Iran. They are often described as the world's largest people without a state. 

Many have been internally displaced in the Middle East because of decades of bitter conflicts, while others have been forced to flee persecution to the West, especially Western Europe.

After three Kurds were shot dead and three others injured on Friday in the 10th district of Paris, home to a large Kurdish population, the community is once again fearful. 

The shooting has deepened raw wounds, coming less than 10 years after three Kurdish women activists were gunned down in the same area.

The community's anger has spilled over with protests and tribute rallies to the victims where demonstrators have chanted: "Our martyrs do not die" in Kurdish and demanded "truth and justice".

The community wants justice for the 2013 unsolved murder of three activists who belonged to the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), proscribed by Turkey and its Western allies as a "terrorist" organisation.

Around 150,000 Kurds live in France.

The greatest number of Kurds live in Turkey, where they account for around 20 percent of the overall population.

Predominantly Sunni Muslims, with non-Muslim minorities and often secular political groups, the Kurds live on almost half a million square kilometres (around 190,000 square miles) of territory in the Middle East.

The collapse of the Ottoman Empire at the end of World War I opened the way for the creation of a Kurdish state in the post-war Treaty of Sevres.

However Turkish nationalists, led by army general Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, opposed the harsh terms of the treaty and launched a new war.