France: Police frustrate terrorist attack

[G.O.G]

French police thwarted a "new attack" with the arrest of seven people in Strasbourg (northeast) and Marseille (southeast), Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said Monday.

Seven people, aged 29-37, of French, Moroccan and Afghan nationality, were detained during the anti-terrorist operation carried out late Saturday after an investigation "of more than eight months," the minister said.

Six of the suspects were not known to the intelligence services and the seventh, a Moroccan, had been identified by another country.

This operation of several months allowed "to frustrate a terrorist action planned from long time in our territory", indicated the minister of the Interior.

Police arrested five people linked to the same network on June 14, 2016, a few days before the start of the Euro Cup, the minister said.

The investigation, in the hands of the Paris prosecutor, will "determine the respective roles of the detainees and determine if the attempted bombing was to be a simultaneous coordinated attack against several parts of the territory," Cazeneuve said.

France faces an unprecedented jihadist threat. In November 2015, 130 people were killed in coordinated attacks in Paris and in July 2016, 86 were killed in an attack in Nice on the French Riviera.

Since the beginning of the year, 418 people linked to terrorist networks have been arrested in France, the minister added, according to AFP.