The sole surviving member of an Islamic State terror cell that killed 130 people in Paris in November 2015 was handed a whole-life sentence on Wednesday at the end of a trial that aimed to draw a line under the worst peacetime atrocity in modern French history.

Salah Abdeslam, a 32-year-old Frenchman of Moroccan origin, was captured alive by police four months after the bloodbath at the Bataclan concert hall and other locations.

His sentence, the toughest possible, was read out by the head of a five-judge panel overseeing the trial of 20 men accused of involvement in the assault on the capital.

"The sentences are quite heavy," one tearful survivor, Sophie, told AFP as she left the court in central Paris. "I feel a lot of relief. Ten months of hearings – it has helped us to rebuild."

The trial was the biggest in modern French history, the culmination of a six-year international investigation whose findings run to more than a million pages.

The other 19 suspects, accused of either plotting or offering logistical support, were also found guilty, with their sentences ranging from two years to life in prison.

All the attackers except for Abdeslam blew themselves up or were killed by police during or after the assault.

"My first reaction is that we have the feeling of turning a page after the verdicts," Gerard Chemla, a lawyer representing victims at the trial, told reporters.

Abdeslam had begun his appearances last September by defiantly declaring himself as an "Islamic State fighter" but finished tearfully apologizing to victims and asking for leniency.

His lawyers had also argued against the whole-life sentence, which prosecutors had demanded.

It offers only a small chance of parole after 30 years and has been pronounced only four times previously since being created in 1994.

A team of 10 militants laid siege to the French capital, attacking the national sports stadium, bars, and the Bataclan in an assault immediately claimed from Syria by the Islamic State group.

The attacks shocked France, with the choice of targets and the manner of the violence seemingly designed to inflict maximum fear, just 10 months after a separate assault on the Charlie Hebdo magazine.

(With input from AFP)