French police arrest four for planning a Paris attack

A journalist films the debris of an explosion in front of an appatment building after a raid by French police in Clapiers. Photo: Reuters

A journalist films the debris of an explosion in front of an appatment building after a raid by French police in Clapiers. Photo: Reuters

Published Feb 10, 2017

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Paris - Four people have been arrested in

and around the southern French city of Montpellier on suspicion

of planning an imminent terrorist attack in France, the interior

ministry said on Friday.

Police and judicial sources said those in custody included a

20-year-old man and his 16-year-old girlfriend, both known to

authorities for connections with radical Islam, and said the

attack had been due to take place in Paris.

Police found TATP explosives and other bomb-making materials

in the man's home, the sources said. The interior ministry

confirmed that explosives had been found.

A view shows an apartment building after a raid by French police in Clapiers. Photo: Reuters

France, which will hold the first round of a presidential

election in just over 10 weeks time, remains on high alert over

possible Islamist militant attacks.

More than 230 people have died in a series of assaults since

the beginning of 2015, and the country has been under a state of

emergency rules since November the same year.

"The initial indications are that an imminent attack on

French soil has been thwarted," Interior Minister Bruno Le Roux

said in the statement.

The government has said it foiled 17 attacks during 2016. In

July, 86 people were killed when a man deliberately drove a

truck into a crowd in the city of Nice.

On Friday in the riviera city, a makeshift memorial was

being dismantled ahead of a carnival that was due to begin on

Saturday.

Separately on Friday, a top French judicial body ruled as

unconstitutional a law that aimed to catch would-be Islamist

attackers.

The law, which bans people from regularly consulting

jihadist websites that urge "acts of terrorism", was brought in

last June.

Last Friday a man was shot and seriously wounded when he

attacked soldiers with machetes outside the Louvre museum in

central Paris.

Reuters

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