Prosecutor: Failed Paris car bomb plotted by IS-guided women
PARIS — A failed car bombing in the heart of Paris was hatched by a group of French women, including one once engaged to men who had already killed in the name of the Islamic State group, France’s top anti-terrorism prosecutor said Friday.
The hunt to find the women, who authorities said were guided from Syria, had been “a race against time” before they could strike again, said Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve, overseeing the fight against militant extremists who have killed more than 200 people in France in the past 10 months.
The Thursday night arrests linked three attacks — the failed car bomb near Notre Dame Cathedral, the killing of two police near Paris in June, and the stabbing death of a French priest during Mass in July — and marked a new phase in the Islamic State group’s efforts to sow fear in Europe.
“There’s a group that has been annihilated, but there are others,” said President Francois Hollande. “Information we were able to get from our intelligence services allowed us to act before it was too late.”