The auto, whose owner is on an intelligence services watchlist of people suspected of religious radicalisation, was discovered near Notre-Dame cathedral in Paris on Saturday night with seven gas cylinders inside, police and judicial officials said on Wednesday, Reuters news agency reported.
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French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve told the press on Thursday that the suspects were aged 39, 23 and 19, were “radicalized fanatics” and “likely preparing violent actions”.
The woman, Ines Madani, was injured in the leg and arrested after a stand-off on Thursday night with police in Boussy-Saint-Antoine, south of Paris. The police discovered six full gas canisters, one empty gas canister, and three jerrycans filled with diesel.
Anti-terror police and the French General Directorate for Internal Security (DGSI) have launched an investigation.
This was when her Peugeot 607 was found after a bar worker alerted police to the vehicle.
On Tuesday, police arrested a 34-year-old man and a 29-year-old woman on a motorway in southern France. “France is confronted with a terrorist threat of unprecedented scale”. Other officials said it was the teenager who attacked the officer.
Florence Berthout, the mayor of the district where the vehicle was found, complained in a letter to the Paris police chief that the auto was “illegally parked for over two hours, despite several telephone calls to police headquarters”.
The owner of the vehicle used in the incident, who was on an intelligence services watchlist of people suspected of religious radicalisation, was initially arrested but was later released due to having gone to police on Sunday to report that his daughter had disappeared with his auto. Under French law they can be detained for up to four days without charge. Last November a group of men carried out shooting and suicide bombing attacks across Paris, killing 130 people and injuring hundreds. The Islamic State militant group claimed responsibility for the attack.
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“An anti-terrorism operation led to the arrest of three women linked to an abandoned vehicle containing gas cylinders on Thursday”, Xinhua news agency quoted Cazeneuve as saying.
