Paris gas cannister plot suspect shot and jailed

A woman wanted in connection with the discovery of a car found near the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris containing six gas cannisters was shot and arrested on Thursday by French police.

The arrest was made south of the capital, an inquiry source said.

The woman seized in Boussy-Saint-Antoine was one of the car owner's daughters, the source said, adding that a police officer suffered a knife wound during the arrest. Two other women were also held.

Radicalised youth

French police have been searching for two "radicalised" women linked to a car containing six gas cylinders found near the Notre Dame cathedral in central Paris.

Four people - two brothers and their girlfriends - were already in custody over the discovery, a source close to the probe also said.

A 34-year-old man and a 29-year-old woman, the first couple arrested, have been held since Tuesday and are known to the security services for links to radical Islamists.

The man's brother and his girlfriend, both aged 26, were arrested late Wednesday, the source said.

The two women being sought are the daughters of the owner of the grey Peugeot 607 that was found abandoned on Sunday near Notre Dame, which draws millions of visitors every year.

They have both been described as "radicalised".

High Alert

France has been on high alert following a string of Islamic State group-inspired attacks, including last November's coordinated bloodshed in which extremists killed 130 people.

Speaking on Thursday, President Francois Hollande referred to attack plots that have been foiled "in recent days", without elaborating.

A bar employee working near Notre Dame raised the alert after noticing a gas cylinder on the back seat of the car, police said.

The car had no number plates and its hazard lights were flashing.

Although the cylinder on the back seat was empty, five full cylinders were discovered in the boot of the car.

Three bottles of diesel fuel were also discovered in the vehicle, but police found no detonators.

"If it was an attack plot, the method was very strange," a police source said Thursday.

Photographs of the car after it was discovered showed its boot open and the gas cylinders placed on the ground in a quiet side street opposite the cathedral.

Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said on Wednesday the intentions of those arrested were as yet unknown.

Hollande's comments followed a deadly summer in France in which 86 people were killed when a truck ploughed into a Bastille Day crowd in the southern resort of Nice.

IS said the truck was driven by one of its followers.

Less than two weeks later, two young radicalised men murdered a priest near the northern city of Rouen.

In May, the head of France's DGSI domestic intelligence service, Patrick Calvar, warned of a "new form of a top prosecutor said last week.


Agencies contributed to this report.