French investigators were on Saturday probing a group of women arrested on suspicion of plotting new jihadist attacks, including an attempted vehicle bomb near Paris’s Notre Dame cathedral.
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One of the three women stabbed a police officer during her arrest before being shot and wounded, Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said late on Thursday.
She had written a letter pledging allegiance to the group and saying she had rallied to the call to punish France for its attacks on Muslims, Molins said.
One of the women, identified as Sarah H, aged 23, had been engaged separately to two French jihadists, both now dead, who carried out attacks this year. Other officials said it was the teenager who attacked the officer.
According to Cazeneuve, a police officer from the General Directorate for Internal Security (DGSI) was injured during the raid.
In May, the head of France’s DGSI domestic intelligence service, Patrick Calvar, warned of a “new form of attack” in which explosive devices would be left near sites that attract large crowds.
The two women being sought are the daughters of the car’s owner – who was also known to authorities for spreading Islamist ideas.
Four people – two brothers and their girlfriends – are already in custody over the discovery of the vehicle. Officials have said for months that adolescent girls and young women are increasingly being recruited by IS in France.
No detonator was however found and is said the method of attack plot was unusual.
“The terrorist organisation uses not only women, but young women, who get to know them and develop their plot from a distance”, he told reporters. She then was to marry Adel Kermiche, who slit the throat of the Rev. Jacques Hamel, 85, during morning Mass in July in the Normandy town of Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray, Molins said.
A security official, who also can not be identified when speaking about the investigation, said Madani had pulled a knife during the raid outside a small apartment building near the Boussy-Saint-Antoine train station.
Anti-terrorism units did not discover detonators in the auto, which carried no registration plate, but they found documents written in Arabic language.
“There’s a group that has been annihilated, but there are others”, said President Francois Hollande.
She is also known to police for attempting to join insurgents in Syria.
French security services are particularly anxious about the danger posed by extremists returning from Syria after fighting with IS forces.
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The third woman was identified as Amel S, 39.
