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.