The failed attack near Notre Dame Cathedral was spearheaded by a group of women that included a 19-year-old whose written pledge of allegiance to the Islamic State group was found by police, a security official said Friday.
Advertisement
The women, aged 39, 23 and 19, were arrested on Thursday night as part of a probe into a vehicle, loaded with six gas cylinders and three cans of diesel, that was found on Sunday parked near the renowned Notre Dame cathedral.
A police officer was injured in the shoulder when one woman attacked him with a knife in Boussy-Saint-Antoine, southeast of Paris, the minister told reporters.
Another official, who also can not be identified, said one of the women pulled a knife and stabbed a police officer during the arrest.
They are working on the assumption that the unmarked auto found near Notre Dame was supposed to be used as part of an attack that was botched for an as yet unknown reason. The three women were apparently attempting to avenge the death of Abu Muhammad al-Adnani, the Islamic State’s lead propaganda officer killed in Syria in late August, RTL reported.
The auto owner had been taken into custody earlier this week but was later released.
According to the report, the suspected militants targeted Gare de Lyon, one of Paris’ main train stations and another one at Boussy-Saint-Antoine in southeastern Paris.
Molins said another of the women had been the girlfriend of two jihadists killed this year while carrying out attacks.
“There are others out there”, warned French President Francois Hollande on Friday afternoon from Athens, where he is attending an global summit.
This year France has been hit with a wave of terrorist attacks by ISIS – including the butchering of a priest at the alter in Normandy and the Bastille Day massacre in Nice.
Florence Berthout, mayor of Paris’s Fifth Arrondissement, said the incident had highlighted the need to beef up security and put more police on patrol in one of the world’s most visited cities.
Terror attacks have killed more than 230 people in France since the beginning of 2015.
The head of France’s DGSI domestic intelligence service, Patrick Calvar, warned in May of a “new form of attack” in which explosive devices would be left near sites that attract large crowds.
Scores of religiously radicalised people of French and other nationalities are in Syria and Iraq fighting for Islamic State, also known as Isis.
Advertisement
“France is confronted with a terrorist threat of unprecedented scale”.
