FRENCH INTELLIGENCE services are hunting a female would-be suicide bomber whom they believe is planning to attack the Paris transport system.
The country is on full alert against a specific terrorist threat that has been confirmed by two separate sources, according to French radio.
The rector of the Grand Mosque of Paris, Dalil Boubakeur, considered a moderate Muslim, has also been given three armed guards after a spokesman said he was under a “real threat”.
Interior minister Brice Hortefeux refused to give details of the threat but said “our vigilance is reinforced today”. Last week Mr Hortefeux admitted the threat was at a “high level” when he visited the Eiffel Tower after it was evacuated following a bomb alert.
The Saint-Michel metro station near Notre Dame cathedral was also briefly evacuated over a similar threat.
France’s terrorism level has been on what is described as “reinforced red” since 5am last Thursday. This followed intelligence from a north African country – said to be either Morocco or Algeria – that an Algerian was planning to carry out an attack on a Paris train, bus or metro that day. French intelligence had been given similar information from another source.
RTL radio said: “The secret services spent the whole day searching for the suspected woman terrorist . . . in vain. The extremely credible threat is still being taken seriously today.”
The threat is being linked to the kidnapping of seven nuclear workers – five French, one Togolese and one Madagascan – in Niger last week. There has been no admission of responsibility for the attack on the foreign workers – six men employed by the French nuclear company Areva and one woman – in Arlit, 800km northeast of the capital Niamey, but French officials suspect al-Qaeda’s north African branch.
Bernard Squarcini, head of France's counter-terrorism services, said in an interview with Le Journal du Dimancheat the beginning of September that the threat of an attack in France "had never been higher".
France fears the threat is heightened by the return to France of Islamist extremists who have been waging jihad in Afghanistan and Iraq. There is also anger over the planned ban on wearing the burqa in public places; the presence of French troops in Afghanistan; and a French commando attack on an al-Qaeda base in Mali in July, which led to the death of seven members of its north African branch. – (Guardian service)