Five men from a small French town that supplied around 20 extremist fighters to the war in Syria, most of whom never returned, went on trial Thursday (April 5th) accused of a terrorist conspiracy, AFP reported.

Lunel, a town of 26,000 people outside the coastal Mediterranean city of Montpellier drew attention when a group of friends slipped out of the country to Syria in 2013 and 2014.

At least eight members of the group are believed to have been killed in Syria, with another seven missing there.

The outsize number of recruits from the town in the Camargues region, a mostly rural area where unemployment runs high, had one boasting in a wire-tapped conversation in 2014 that "Lunel is the French town that is best represented in the ranks of the 'Islamic State of Iraq and Syria' (ISIS)".

Most of the extremists, some of them converts to Islam, were childhood friends who attended the same mosques, watched propaganda videos and hung out at the same fast-food joint.

On arriving in Syria, they joined a group linked to the former al-Nusra Front (ANF) before joining ISIS when it seized parts of Syria in 2014.

Only five suspected members of the group remain in France, where they are being tried with involvement in a terrorist conspiracy.

The case is set to run until April 11th.