Three women arrested in connection with a auto loaded with gas cylinders found near Notre Dame cathedral had been planning an attack on a Paris railway station, the French interior ministry said.
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Gare de Lyon is a station three miles from Notre Dame cathedral, where the vehicle was discovered on Saturday.
French police investigating a vehicle containing 6 gas cylinders in Paris have arrested 3 female suspects said to have been planning fresh attacks, shooting one of them in the process.
The security official, who was not authorized to be publicly identified, said French authorities have a document in which Madani declares allegiance to the extremist group.
The French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said all three were planning an “imminent violent attack”.
The New York Times reports that the Paris prosecutor’s office revealed on Wednesday that a 34-year-old man and a 29-year-old woman, who were described as a radicalized couple, were arrested a day earlier and transferred to Paris to be questioned in the case.
The discovery last Saturday night triggered a counter-terrorism inquiry.
Documents with writing in Arabic were also found in the auto, which had no registration plates and was left with its hazard lights flashing.
French policemen take part in a police raid in Boussy-Saint-Antoine near Paris, France, September 8, 2016.
A bar employee working near Notre Dame had first raised an alarm on Sunday after noticing a gas cylinder in the back seat of a grey Peugeot 607, the police said.
Forensic investigators carry boxes out of a building in Boussy-Saint-Antoine, France, after the female suspects were arrested on Thursday. It said the 19-year-old woman stabbed the officer and was injured.
The police briefly detained the vehicle owner and questioned him before releasing him, the prosecutor’s office said.
The arrests of the three “radicalised” women aged 39, 23 and 19-years-old came after intelligence services had warned police on Thursday that an attack was imminent. “France is confronted with an unprecedented terrorist threat”, he added.
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Thousands of extra police and soldiers have been deployed to patrol sensitive sites across France since last year’s terrorist attacks on Charlie Hebdo and a Paris kosher supermarket followed by November’s attacks which resulted in 130 people being killed by Islamist gunmen and suicide bombers in coordinated attacks in Paris.
