Paris gas canisters suspect pledged loyalty to IS

Five women and two men have been arrested in the case.

“One of three women arrested was injured during this operation”. “A group has been destroyed”, he said, but he warned: “there are others”.

“The terrorist organisation uses not only women, but young women, who get to know them and develop their plot from a distance”, Prosecutor Francois Molins told a news conference.

He added the women had been guided remotely from “Syria-based individuals within the ranks of the Daesh terrorist organisation (which) shows that this organisation intends to make combatants of women”. But an all-female gang seeking to carry out atrocities on behalf of ISIL would be a new development, certainly in Europe.

The wounded woman is believed to be Ines Madani, 19, who was shot in her apartment in Boussy-Saint-Antoine, south of the French capital.

Security in train stations around Paris was visibly higher on Friday as the investigation into the auto widened.

A bomb squad with dogs and a scanner was deployed when a gas canister with a timer but no detonator was found outside a police station on Friday morning in La Plaine Saint Denis, just north of Paris, and one kilometre from the Stade de France in Saint Denis, police said.

Although the cylinder on the back seat was empty, five full cylinders were discovered in the boot of the auto. She was found in another Paris suburb. Molins said the perpetrators had clearly tried to blow the auto up and if they had succeeded it would have led to the explosion of the whole vehicle.

Three women have been arrested in connection with the Paris incident.

Police sources said no detonator had been found, though the vehicle also contained three jerry cans of diesel fuel, adding to concerns that there had been a plan to explode the auto. Boumeddiene is wanted in France having fled to Syria shortly before the Charlie Hebdo killings.

Police in Marseille were trying to locate the owner of the auto they found near the synagogue, Nuñez said.

Sarah H., 23, had been engaged to Larossi Abballa, whom authorities said killed a police officer and his girlfriend at their home in June before turning his gun on himself, according to Molins.

Adel Kermiche attacked the elderly cleric while he was conducting a morning Mass in July.

The Local reports the names of the other two women as Sarah, 23, and Amel, 39.

Known to authorities for previously planning to go to Syria, she was arrested in southern France on Tuesday with her boyfriend, who has since been released.

A failed vehicle bomb plot near the Notre Dame in Paris was hatched by a group of women guided by IS. Both are aged 26 or 27 and the man is the brother of the 34-year-old suspect detained on the motorway.

The minister did not give further details about the arrests.

The disturbing revelations that so numerous suspects were known for extremist links or sympathies are likely to intensify calls for some form of internment – detention without trial – for those considered to be threats even if there is insufficient evidence for prosecution.