Friday, June 26, 2015

Severed head discovered at French gas factory after attack

A decapitated body covered in Arabic writing was found at a gas factory in southeastern France after an attack Friday, with the severed head posted on the entrance gate, police sources and French media said.
The attacker rammed a car into the premises, triggering an explosion. The assailant survived the blast and was arrested, police said. The identity of the beheaded victim was not clear, but French media said it was a manager of a local transport company, on the site for a delivery.
President Francois Hollande, speaking in Brussels, said one person was killed and two injured in the attack, which began shortly before 10 a.m. local time (4 a.m. EDT) when a car crashed the gate of the gas factory in Saint-Quentin-Fallavier, southeast of Lyon. The car then plowed into gas canisters, setting off an explosion, he said.
"No doubt about the intention — to cause an explosion," Hollande said, calling the attack "of a terrorist nature."
A security official said a severed head was found posted on the gate at the entrance to the factory, a tactic that bears similarities to those of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant's (ISIL) practice of beheading prisoners and displaying the heads.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release details to the media, said the body was found near the site of the explosion but the victim was not decapitated by the blast.
Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said one suspect, named as Yassin Sahli, had been arrested, and police were holding other suspected accomplices. He said Sahli did not have a criminal record but had been under surveillance from 2006 to 2008 on suspicion.

"Two individuals deliberately rammed a car into the gas containers to trigger an explosion," a police source said of the attack in an industrial zone by the town of Saint-Quentin Fallavier, 20 miles southeast of Lyon.

However, the number of assailants was thrown into doubt, with Hollande saying it could have been either one or two.

The industrial site belongs to Air Products, an American chemical company based in Allentown, Pennsylvania.

France's anti-terror prosecutor said an investigation was opened into the attack.

France went on high alert after attacks in January against the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo, a kosher grocery and a policewoman that left 20 people dead in the Paris region, including the three attackers.

Since then, fears of copycat attacks have risen. One person was arrested after authorities said he was plotting to gun down people in churches in the Paris area.

The coordinated attacks in January revived concerns in France, and the rest of Europe, about the threat posed by European citizens who may be inspired or deployed by armed groups aboard. Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) claimed credit for the Charlie Hebdo attack.

More than 12,000 foreign fighters have fought in Syria since the beginning of the country’s civil war in 2011, with as many as 700 of those believed to be from France, according to a report by the Soufan Group (PDF).

One of them, French national Mehdi Nemmouche, killed four people at a Jewish museum in Brussels in May 2014.

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