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Arrested militants planned attack on Paris railway station, France says

By Gérard Bon

PARIS (Reuters) – Three women arrested in connection with a car loaded with gas cylinders found in a side road near Notre Dame cathedral had been planning an attack on a Paris railway station, the French interior ministry said.

“An alert has been issued to all stations but they had planned to attack the Gare de Lyon on Thursday,” a ministry official said on Friday after the arrests overnight.

The Gare de Lyon station is in the southeast of the capital, less than 3 kilometers from the cathedral which marks the center.

The official also said the youngest of the three women, a 19 year-old whose father was the owner of the car and who was already suspected by police of wanting to go and fight for Islamic State in Syria, had written a letter pledging allegiance to the militant Islamist group.

The discovery on Saturday night of the Peugeot 607 laden with seven gas cylinders, six of them full, triggered a terrorism investigation and revived fears about further attacks in a country where Islamist militants have killed more than 230 people since January, 2015.

Scores of religiously radicalize people of French and other nationalities are in Syria and Iraq fighting for Islamic State. Many of those involved in recent attacks in France have either taken part in the fighting or had plans to.

France is among the countries bombing Islamic State strongholds, and the group has urged supporters to launch more attacks on French soil.

One of the women stabbed a police officer during her arrest before being shot and wounded, Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said late on Thursday. Other officials said it was the teenager who attacked the officer.

TV footage showed a policeman leaving the scene of the arrests on the outskirst of Paris carrying a large knife.

Police sources said no detonator had been found in the car, though the vehicle also contained three jerry cans of diesel fuel.

When it was found in the early hours of Sunday morning the car had no registration plates and was left with its hazard lights flashing.

“These three women aged 39, 23 and 19 had been radicalize, were fanatics and were in all likelihood preparing an imminent, violent act,” Cazeneuve said in a televised statement. They bring to seven the number of people detained since Tuesday.

The arrests took place in Boussy-Saint-Antoine, some 30 km (20 miles) south-east of Paris.

The car’s owner was taken into custody earlier this week but later released. He had gone to police on Sunday to report that his daughter had disappeared with his car, officials said.

(Additional reporting by Marine Pennetier; Writing by Andrew Callus; Editing by Richard Lough and Toby Chopra)

Paris to open first migrant camp by October

Migrants tents are seen at a makeshift camp on a street, northern Paris, France,

PARIS (Reuters) – Paris will house close to 1,000 migrants in two camps to tackle the growing number of men, women and children fleeing war and poverty who are sleeping rough on the French capital’s streets, the city’s mayor said on Tuesday.

The building of the two camps in the capital comes as the government faces pressure to dismantle a swollen shanty town dubbed the ‘jungle’ near the port of Calais, whose inhabitants are blamed by residents for an increase in crime and the ailing local economy.

Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo said one camp would be built for men, the other for vulnerable women and children, with the first site opening in mid-October.

“We have to come up with new ways of overcoming the situation. Things are saturated,” Hidalgo told a news conference. “These migrant camps reflect our values.”

Hidalgo said the camps would be temporary and cost 6.5 million euros to set up, of which the Paris municipal authorities would cover 80 percent.

While France has been much less affected by Europe’s migrant crisis than neighboring Germany, thousands of asylum seekers use it as a transit point in the hope of reaching Britain.

Truck drivers, farmers and Calais business owners on Monday blocked traffic on the motorway approach to Calais demanding a deadline for the dismantling of the “jungle”.

(Reporting by Chine Labbe; Writing by Richard Lough; Editing by Richard Balmforth)

Second French church attacker was known to police: sources

French police guard stand in front of church

By Chine Labbé and Michel Rose

PARIS/SAINT-ETIENNE-DU-ROUVRAY, France (Reuters) – The second teenager involved in the killing of a priest in a church in France this week was a 19-year-old who was known to security services as a potential Islamist militant, police and judicial sources said on Thursday.

The man also appears to be a suspect that police were looking for in recent days after a tipoff from a foreign intelligence service that he was planning an attack, the police sources said.

The revelations are likely to fuel criticism by opposition politicians that President Francois Hollande’s Socialist government did not do enough to stop the pair given that they were already under police surveillance.

They interrupted a church service, forced a 85-year-old Roman Catholic priest to his knees at the altar and slit his throat. They were both shot and killed by police.

Police have identified the second man as Abdel-Malik Nabil Petitjean from a town in eastern France on the border with Germany, a judicial source told Reuters.

Security services had on June 29 opened a special file on Petitjean for becoming radicalized, a police source said separately. The government has said there are about 10,500 people with so-called ‘S files’ related to potential jihadi activities in France.

His accomplice, Adel Kermiche, had already been identified by police. He was known to intelligence services after failed bids to reach Syria to wage jihad.

Kermiche, also 19, wore an electronic bracelet and was awaiting trial for alleged membership of a terrorist organization having been released on bail.

Acting on a tipoff from a foreign intelligence agency France’s intelligence services sent a photo to various security forces, but did not have a name, sources close to the investigation said.

Police did not have the name of the person in the photo but now have little doubt that it is Petitjean, the police sources said.

The person in the photo appears to be one of two people who can be seen in a video posted on Wednesday by Islamic State’s news agency, they said. The video claimed the two men were the church attackers pledging allegiance to the group’s leader.

Petitjean’s mother Yamina told BFM TV that her son had never spoken about Islamic State. Three people close to Petitjean have been detained in police custody, a judicial source said. A 16-year-old, being held since Tuesday in connection with the attack, is still in custody.

Tuesday’s attack came less than two weeks after another suspected Islamist drove a truck into a Bastille Day crowd, killing 84 people.

Opposition politicians have responded to the attacks with strong criticism of the government’s security record, unlike last year, when they made a show of unity after gunmen and bombers killed 130 people at Paris entertainment venues in November and attacked a satirical newspaper in January.

Hollande’s predecessor and potential opponent in a presidential election next year, Nicolas Sarkozy, has said the government must take stronger steps to track known Islamist sympathizers.

He has called for the detention or electronic tagging of all suspected Islamist militants, even if they have committed no offense.

Kermiche’s tag did not send an alarm because the attack took place during the four hour period when he was allowed out.

According to the justice ministry, there are just 13 terrorism suspects and people convicted of terrorist links wearing tags such as the one worn by Kermiche. Seven are on pre-trial bail. The other six have been convicted but wear the electronic bracelet instead of serving a full jail term.

Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve rejected Sarkozy’s proposal, saying that to jail them would be unconstitutional and counterproductive.

He has said summer festivals that do not meet tight security standards would be canceled, and announced a shift in the deployment of 10,000 soldiers already on the streets, saying more would now be sent to the provinces.

Since the Bastille Day killings in Nice, there has been a spate of attacks in Germany too, creating greater alarm in Western Europe already reeling from last year’s attacks in France and attacks this year in Brussels.

(Reporting by Chine Labbe; writing by Leigh Thomas; Editing by Andrew Callus and Anna Willard)

Paris protesters march under huge police presence

By Ingrid Melander and Brian Love

PARIS (Reuters) – Thousands of demonstrators marched under massive police presence in Paris on Thursday to demand that President Francois Hollande scrap labor reform plans that have sparked months of protests marked by serious violence.

More than 2,000 police enforced strict security measures around the capital’s Place de la Bastille square to control the march, checking bags and turning away people with helmets or face-masks.

Police said 85 people were arrested as crowds converged on the marching zone.

The Socialist government originally banned the march but, facing a backlash within its own traditional support base, it backed down and allowed it.

But President Francois Hollande said his government would not retreat from labor legislation that will make hiring and firing easier in a contested attempt to tackle an unemployment rate that has been stuck at 10 percent for most of his time in office.

“We will take this bill to the finish line,” Hollande told reporters as thousands of protestors marched in summer heat along a short protest circuit patrolled by more than one riot police officer per meter (yard).

In a months-long stand-off, neither side wanted to cave in and lose face over a reform plan that opinion polls say is opposed by more than two in three French voters.

“A majority of French people say it (that they oppose the reform). The majority of unions say it, and there’s no majority in favor of it in the National Assembly (lower house of parliament),” said Philippe Martinez, leader of the hardline CGT labor union.

The march tested police forces already stretched under a state of emergency imposed since deadly attacks by Islamist militants in November and by fan violence at the Euro 2016 soccer tournament France is hosting.

The protests against a legislative bill that would loosen protection of worker rights pit Hollande’s unpopular government against the CGT, which is also fighting for a place as France’s most powerful union.

Hollande says the reform is key to hauling down double-digit unemployment, something he has promised if he is to run in next year’s presidential election.

CGT leader Martinez accused Prime Minister Manuel Valls of pinning the blame for the escalating disorder on his group. He condemned the rioters but said the government had inflamed passions as unions sought a deal on the labor reforms.

“Every time we try to calm things down the prime minister throws fuel on the flames again.”

Previous protests have been marred by hundreds of mostly masked youths engaging in running battles with police, hurling paving stones, smashing shops and plastering anti-capitalist slogans on buildings. Police have said some CGT members were in involved in the violence.

(Additional reporting by Jean-Baptise Vey and Simon Carraud; Editing by Richard Balmforth)

France will see further terror attacks says Prime Minister

French Prime Minister Manuel Valls leaves the Elysee Palace following the weekly cabinet meeting in Paris

PARIS (Reuters) – France is doing all it can to prevent terrorist attacks but there will be more of them, Prime Minister Manuel Valls said on Wednesday following this week’s murder of a policeman and his wife by a Frenchman who pledged allegiance to Islamic State.

Valls said the intelligence and police services had foiled 15 attacks since 2013 and were waging a non-stop battle to track down would be terrorists.

“We need to tighten the net and give police and intelligence services all the means they need, but we will witness further attacks,” he said on France Inter radio.

“More innocents will lose their lives,” he said.

(Reporting By Brian Love; Editing by Andrew Callus)

French police couple killed in attack claimed by Islamic State

Police at the scene where a French police commander was stabbed to death in front of his home in the Paris

By Chine Labbé and Simon Carraud

PARIS/LES MUREAUX (Reuters) – A Frenchman who pledged allegiance to Islamic State stabbed a police commander to death outside his home and killed his partner, who also worked for the police, in an attack the government denounced as “an abject act of terrorism”.

Larossi Abballa, 25, also took the couple’s three-year-old son hostage in Monday night’s attack. The boy was found unharmed but in a state of shock after police commandos stormed the house and killed the attacker.

Born in France of Moroccan origin, Abballa was jailed in 2013 for helping Islamist militants go to Pakistan and had been under security service surveillance, including wiretaps, at the time of the attack, Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said.

The attacker told police negotiators during the siege he had answered an appeal by Iraq-based Islamic State chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi “to kill infidels at home with their families”, Molins told a news conference.

“The killer said he was a practicing Muslim, was observing Ramadan and, that three weeks ago, he had pledged allegiance to … Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi,” Molins said.

Police found a bloodied knife at the scene along with a list of other potential targets including rap musicians, journalists and police officers, the prosecutor said.

The killings came as France, which has been under a state of emergency since Islamic State gunmen and bombers killed 130 people in Paris last November, was on high security alert for the Euro 2016 soccer tournament, which began last Friday.

In a video posted on social networks, Abballa linked the attack to the soccer championship, saying: “The Euros will be a graveyard.”

The video had been removed from Facebook on Tuesday. Michelle Gilbert, a Paris-based spokeswoman for Facebook, said the company’s guidelines forbade hate messages and aimed to remove such content swiftly from the website once alerted.

“ABJECT ACT OF TERRORISM”

The attacker knifed 42-year-old police commander Jean-Baptiste Salvaing repeatedly in the stomach on Monday evening.

He then barricaded himself inside the house in Magnanville, a suburb 60 km (40 miles) west of Paris, taking the policeman’s partner Jessica Schneider, 36, and their boy hostage. Schneider, a secretary at a police station in a nearby suburb, was killed with a knife, Molins said without giving details.

Islamic State claimed the attack. “God has enabled one of the caliphate’s soldiers in city of Les Mureaux near Paris to stab to death the deputy police chief and his wife,” a broadcast on its Albayan Radio said.

It was the first militant strike on French soil since the multiple attacks on bars, restaurants, a concert hall and the national soccer stadium in Paris in November.

“An abject act of terrorism was carried out yesterday in Magnanville,” Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said after an emergency government meeting, before visiting Les Mureaux, where the police commander worked.

President Francois Hollande said the killings were “undeniably a terrorist act” and that the terrorist threat in France was very high.

Police searched Abballa’s home and other locations on Tuesday and detained three people close to him for questioning.

Details started to emerge on the profile of the attacker. Abballa was born in the nearby town of Meulan and lived in Mantes-la-Jolie, where he had set up a fast food outlet in April, documents from the Versailles court showed.

He was given a three-year prison sentence in 2013 for helping Islamist militants go to Pakistan. His name appeared in a separate ongoing investigation into a man who went to Syria, but he was not considered a threat, a source close to the investigation said.

Abballa had also been convicted three times on charges of aggravated theft and driving without a license, another source close to the investigation said.

David Thomson, an RFI radio journalist specialized in Islamic radicalism, wrote on his Twitter page that Abballa had filmed himself at the site of the attack and posted the message on Facebook.

With the couple’s boy behind him, Abballa said: “I don’t know yet what I’m going to do with him,” Thomson wrote.

Islamic State’s claim of responsibility came after the Islamist militant group also claimed responsibility for the killing of 49 people at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida.

“In Orlando after the terrible homophobic terrorist attacks and Magnanville in a different way, the same ideology of death with the same beliefs (has been at work): kill and spread terror, contest who we are and prevent us from living freely,” Prime Minister Manuel Valls told parliament.

(Additional reporting by Leigh Thomas, Marc Joanny, Matthieu Rosemain, Richard Lough in Paris and Muhammad Yamany in Cairo; Writing by Ingrid Melander; Editing by Paul Taylor and Janet Lawrence)

Two French Police killed in attack claimed by Islamic State

Police vehicles at the scene where a French police commander was stabbed to death in front of his home in the Paris suburb of Magnanville

By Chine Labbé and Simon Carraud

PARIS/LES MUREAUX (Reuters) – A suspected Islamist attacker stabbed a French police commander to death outside his home and later killed his companion, a policewoman, in an attack claimed by Islamic State and denounced by the government as “an abject act of terrorism”.

The assailant, a 25-year-old Frenchman of Moroccan origin, was jailed in 2013 for helping Islamist militants go to Pakistan and had been under security service surveillance, including wiretaps, at the time of the attack, police sources said.

The attacker filmed part of the assault live on the social network Facebook, according to David Thomson, a journalist specialized in radical Islamists. In his Facebook message, he linked the attack to the Euro 2016 soccer tournament now under way in France, saying: “The Euros will be a graveyard.”

The attacker, named by police and justice sources as Larossi Abballa, knifed the 42-year-old commander repeatedly in the stomach on Monday evening.

He then barricaded himself inside the house in Magnanville, a suburb some 60 km (40 miles) west of Paris, taking the man’s 36-year-old partner and their three-year-old son hostage.

Police commandos shot Abballa dead when they stormed the house after negotiations failed but they found the woman, a secretary at a police station in a nearby suburb, killed with a knife, a source close to the investigation said.

The boy was unharmed but in a state of shock.

President Francois Hollande said the killings were “undeniably a terrorist act” and that the terrorist threat in France was very high.

Police searched Abballa’s home and other locations on Tuesday and detained two people close to him for questioning, a police source said.

Police are under “extreme pressure” and “close to burn-out,” the head of FO labor union Jean-Claude Mailly told France 2 television.

ISLAMIC STATE

Islamic State claimed the attack. “God has enabled one of the caliphate’s soldiers in city of Les Mureaux near Paris to stab to death the deputy police chief and his wife,” an official broadcast on its Albayan Radio said.

If it is confirmed that the group was behind the killing, it would be the first militant strike on French soil since the multiple attacks on bars, restaurants, a concert hall and the national soccer stadium in Paris in November.

“He wanted to do jihad (holy war), that was clear,” Marc Trevidic, a former anti-terrorism judge who was in charge of the 2013 investigation told Le Figaro newspaper. But he was seen as having a minor role in that case, he said.

Abballa had also been convicted three times on charges of aggravated theft and driving without a license, a source close to the investigation said.

“Many things are being analyzed,” a justice source said, including messages posted on social networks.

Thomson, an RFI radio journalist specialized in Islamic radicalism, wrote on his Twitter page that Abballa had filmed himself on Facebook live during the attack.

With the couple’s boy behind him he said: “I don’t know yet what I’m going to do with him,” Thomson wrote.

Islamic State’s claim of responsibility came after the Islamist militant group said it was responsible for the shooting that killed 49 people in a massacre at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida.

(Additional reporting by Leigh Thomas, Marc Joanny, Matthieu Rosemain, Richard Lough in Paris and Muhammad Yamany in Cairo; Writing by Ingrid Melander; Editing by Paul Taylor and Dominic Evans)

Rubbish piles up in Paris as pre-euro soccer protests go on

Rubbish piled up on streets in parts of Paris and other French cities on Wednesday as strikes and pickets by waste treatment workers

By Brian Love and Lucien Libert

PARIS (Reuters) – Rubbish piled up on streets in parts of Paris and other French cities on Wednesday as strikes and pickets by waste treatment workers took a toll in the country which hosts the Euro 2016 soccer tournament from Friday.

The protests were part of a wave of demonstrations and work stoppages led by the hardline CGT union against government plans to reform labor law to make hiring and firing easier and help lower the jobless rate from 10 percent.

Police removed blockades at some of the major incineration and rubbish collection depots around the capital but to little effect because workers inside the premises subsequently walked off work, the CGT said.

Despite signs that broader strike action is running out of steam, train services were disrupted for the eighth day running.

The SNCF state railway company said less than 10 percent of workers were on strike, considerably fewer than last week, with three out of four high-speed TGV trains running and six out of 10 slower inter-city connections.

Working to defuse the conflict, Prime Minister Manuel Valls told parliament the state could take over all or part of an SNCF debt of 50 billion euros ($57 billion), possibly hiving it off into a sinking fund to be paid down gradually.

The CGT was holding workplace meetings to decide whether to call off the rail strike.

As millions of foreign visitors and soccer fans prepared for the month-long tournament that kicks off on Friday evening, CGT activists also disrupted a pre-championship publicity event at Paris’s Gare du Nord train station.

About 200 protesters mobbed the station as a locomotive carrying the Euro soccer trophy arrived, a Reuters reporter at the scene said. Riot police protected the trophy.

Separately, the minister in charge of drafting the contested labor law, Myriam El Khomri, condemned a dawn protest outside her Paris home in which she said about 30 demonstrators yelled hostile statements through a megaphone.

Valls has refused to scrap the labor reform but, on top of the debt pledge, has agreed to protect existing rest and shift time quotas for workers in SNCF reorganization talks.

Pilots at Air France are also planning to strike over pay curbs from June 11 to 14.

“The (rail) strike is incomprehensible and the one planned by pilots is every bit as incomprehensible when France is about to start the Euros,” Transport Minister Alain Vidalies said.

(Additional reporting by Lucien Libert and Emmanuel Jarry; Editing by Paul Taylor)

France’s government faces nationwide protests over labor reform

By Brian Love

PARIS (Reuters) – France’s government faced nationwide protests and a no confidence vote in parliament on Thursday after opting to bypass widespread opposition and impose labor reforms that will make hiring and firing easier.

As crowds gathered in cities across France for another day of demonstrations, the CGT labor union called for weekly rolling strikes at the SNCF state rail company from Tuesday night until Friday morning.

Prime Minister Manuel Valls’ Socialist administration was expected to survive the confidence vote.

But a series of strikes and waves of street protests that have shown no sign of easing since they began in late March suggest popular discontent over a reform that pollsters say three out of four people oppose is becoming more entrenched.

“It’s time to move up a gear,” Philippe Martinez, head of the CGT union, said. The main objection to the reform from unions is that it would allow firms to adopt in-house terms on pay and conditions instead of complying with national standards.

The official reason for the rail strike call is a standoff with management over conditions, but its timetable dovetails with the broader protests against government policy.

As crowds gathered in cities across France, government spokesman Stephane Le Foll said there was no question of withdrawing the reform.

But it has left an already deeply unpopular President Francois Hollande, who narrowly survived a rebellion by dissenters in his own party on Wednesday, in an uncomfortable position a year from elections.

The reform is also under fire from a rolling youth protest movement known as Nuit Debout, or ‘Night Uprising’.

Since the protests began, several hundred police have been injured in clashes, often with hooded youths hurling stones and petrol bombs. On Thursday, news television channels showed footage of secondary-school pupils blocking schools entrances with garbage bins.

The interior ministry advised motorists to stay away from central Paris ahead of an afternoon march and also reported traffic halted by road blockages in some places.

Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo, a prominent Socialist, added her voice to the dissenters, declaring on Europe 1 radio: “This law does just nothing for social justice.”

Hollande has several other problems piling up.

Media speculation is rife that his youthful economy minister Emmanuel Macron could run for president in the election scheduled for May 2017.

His government has also been caught up in a controversy over sexual harassment in the corridors of power.

After the resignation a politician accused of harassing female colleagues, Finance Minister Michel Sapin, a close Hollande ally, on Wednesday admitted behaving inappropriately toward a female journalist.

(Reporting By Brian Love; Editing by Andrew Callus and John Stonestreet)

French Police clash with more protesters over labor laws

Masked youths face off with French police during a demonstration against the French labour law proposal in Paris

By Brian Love

PARIS (Reuters) – French police clashed with protesters outside a school building in Paris on Wednesday in fresh unrest involving police amid anger over government plans to reform highly-protective labor laws.

Police used teargas to disperse a crowd that tried to stop them removing nearly 300 immigrants who had moved into an empty secondary school that was due to reopen after renovation, Paris police chief Michel Cadot said.

“The state is obliged to apply the law,” Cadot said. The migrants from countries including Sudan and Eritrea had been removed peacefully after police broke through a ring of 200 to 250 protesters, he said.

Four police were slightly hurt, a statement said.

Hundreds of police officers have been reported injured in the past weeks in clashes with demonstrators during street marches across France the country – most of them rallies in protest over a bill that would make it easier in some cases to fire employees.

On Tuesday seven riot police officers were hurt in clashes with masked youths in the Western city of Nantes.

“This is totally unacceptable, with 300 police hurt since the start of the year,” said government spokesman Stephane Le Foll. “We will not let this pass.”

The primary focus of protest is the planned reform of some of the most extensive and protective labor rules in Europe.

An Elabe opinion poll released on Wednesday showed that three out of four French people oppose a bill that the government argues will remove red tape and encourage employers to recruit in a country where the jobless rate is above 10 percent.

Critics fear the bill will undermine employers’ obligations under the current national labor code.

Police chief Cadot is also seeking to tighten the noose on a rolling youth protest movement – called Nuit Debout – that has been organizing late-night sit-ins at the large Place de la Republique square in central Paris.

After repeated clashes where youths hurled petrol bombs and paving stones at police, he has banned alcohol consumption and late night music on the square and told Nuit Debout activists to quit the area every day before midnight.

(Reporting by Brian Love; Editing by Richard Balmforth)

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