1. Yet outdoors they still must wear a burqa, the cloak that covers their hair, face and body.

2. One wears a burqa, the black veil, the other a colourful scarf.

3. The Taliban forced all women to wear the burqa.

4. President Nicolas Sarkozy declared last year that the burqa was " not welcome on French soil "

5. One Belgian town has outlawed the burqa and niqab from its streets.

6. Burqa or niqab neither has a place in Islam nor should it obtain a place in civilised Western societies where women are equal to men and public safety of all is paramount.

7. In some cases, thefts have involved burqa - clad customers whose identity could not be established even on closed-circuit television .

8. The opposition Socialist Party opposes the burqa but frets that outlawing it may be counterproductive.

9. Women wearing the burqa and the niqab (the more common facial veil) will not exactly be arrested on sight.

10. Guidelines in the pamphlet forbid police from asking women to remove their burqa or full-face veil in the street.

11. A French parliamentary panel has recommended that face-covering veils such as the burqa or the niqab be banned in public insitutions such as hospitals and schools.

12. They are reinforced by five female intelligence officers, whose main job is to look for suicide bombers who might hide explosives under the capaciousness of the burqa.

13. France is likely to come in for much outside criticism for its burqa ban.

14. Survivors say the bomber was a man dressed in a burqa.