Four people – two brothers and their girlfriends – were already in custody over the vehicle, found just a few hundred metres from the Notre Dame cathedral in central Paris, an area always thronged with tourists.
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The officer was targeted by a knife-woman wielding as they moved in to arrest her and responded by using their firearm, according to reports in French media.
Cazeneuve said on Wednesday the intentions of those arrested were as yet unknown. “It requires the vigilance of all our compatriots”.
The man and a woman detained Wednesday evening in the Loiret area, 100 miles south of Paris, are being questioned by the police, a spokeswoman for the antiterror prosecutor said Thursday. The woman’s arrest occurred in Boussy-Saint-Antoine, near the outskirts of Paris.
The three women arrested, aged 39, 23 and 19, were “radicalised and fanatical”, authorities said, and “likely preparing new violent and imminent [terrorist] actions”.
Prosecutors opened a terrorist investigation after the auto was found near the famous cathedral on Sunday morning. On investigating further, it was discovered that the Peugeot 607, which had no registration plates, was carrying seven gas cylinders, one of of which was empty and on the front passenger seat, Reuters reported.
The spokeswoman said three bottles of petrol were also found in the trunk.
The arrests follow the detention of the 34-year-old owner of the abandoned auto and a 29-year-old woman, who were both later released. He was briefly detained and then released.
Police said no detonator device had been found in the vehicle but it prompted fears that there had been an intent to detonate the vehicle.
One of two suspects in a July church attack that left a priest dead in northern France was known to anti-terror authorities after attempting a trip to Syria, a French anti-terrorism prosecutor said. Both the policeman and the arrested woman have been taken to hospital.
Investigators have spent the past four days raiding the homes of anybody who might be linked to them.
He had gone to police on Sunday to report that his daughter had disappeared with his vehicle.
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The Notre Dame case has revived memories of bombings across Paris in the 1990s by Algerian extremists, several of which involved gas canisters filled with nails.
