Latest developments
• The suspect in Friday’s terrorist attack “was recognized as a delivery employee” at the U.S.-owned gas factory near Lyon in southeastern France, said Paris Prosecutor François Molins, whose office handles terrorism-related cases in France. He said that the 54-year-old victim was a boss at the delivery company.
• Firefighters responding to the explosion “discovered that the criminal was trying to open canisters” in an open warehouse that contained dangerous materials, according to Molins. This suspect was detained, and the vehicle he had been driving “was more or less destroyed.”
• Authorities later found a decapitated body and a knife inside the vehicle of the suspect as well as the victim’s head “with two banners or flags … inscribed with a profession of faith in Islam,” the prosecutor said.
• One person was in the vehicle, but four people have been detained so far — the main suspect, his wife, his sister and “another individual who has been involved in a criminal organization,” Molins said.
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One person has been beheaded and two people injured in a terrorist attack at a U.S.-owned gas factory near Lyon in southeastern France, President François Hollande said Friday.
The suspect’s contacts with Muslim fundamentalists, and reports that Islamist flags or writings were found at the scene, point to a possible Islamist extremist motive.
The shocking episode comes on the same day as both Tunisia and Kuwait were hit by terrorists, the latter an apparent blast at a Shiite-affiliated mosque, an attack claimed by ISIS.
In Tunisia, at least 28 people were killed in the assault on a beachfront hotel in Sousse, Tunisia’s interior minister said, according to the state-run TAP news agency.
Security has been heightened in France since an Islamist terror attack in January when attackers targeted the satirical Charlie Hebdo magazine and a kosher supermarket in Paris.
In a televised address Friday from a summit in Brussels, Belgium, Hollande called the French incident a “pure terrorist attack.” Hollande said a body had been found, along with a severed head with a message. A suspect has been arrested and identified, he said.
The victim of what Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve described as a “barbarous” attack has not yet been publicly identified. But CNN’s French affiliate BFMTV said he was the suspect’s boss, citing a source close to the investigation.
U.S. firm Air Products & Chemicals, which owns the factory, said all its employees were accounted for.
Security will be raised to the maximum level for the next three days across the Rhone-Alpes region where the attack took place, Hollande told reporters after meeting with government ministers in Paris, BFMTV reported.
Suspect ‘was in touch with Salafists’
Cazeneuve, speaking at the scene of the attack, said the suspect’s identity “is being clarified at the moment but we already know that it could be a question of one Yassin Salhi.” He did not confirm the spelling of the name.
The suspect, who is from a suburb of Lyon, is “somebody who was in touch with (Muslim fundamentalist) Salafists,” the minister said.
An intelligence report was opened on the man in 2006 because of suspected radicalization, he said, but it was not renewed in 2008.
“He has been under surveillance, but he was not known as being involved in any terrorist act,” Cazeneuve said, and he had no criminal record. French authorities are “investigating any other people that could be accomplices,” he added.
“The dangerous elements were neutralized immediately after the crime was committed,” he said.
Cazeneuve said flags had been found at the site but that their text has not yet been translated. He did not specify what language was written on the banners.
The attack took place just before 10 a.m. (4 a.m. ET), Hollande said, when a vehicle was driven at high speed “by one individual, maybe with another individual” into the factory site and into a building housing gas canisters.
“There is no doubt that the intention was to provoke an attack, an explosion,” he said.
Hollande expressed his condolences and solidarity with the people who were attacked. He also urged the French people “not to give in to fear” and to remain united as the security forces work to hunt down those responsible.
Witness: Islamist flags
Agence France-Presse news agency earlier reported that a suspected Islamist attacker pinned a severed head covered with Arabic writing to the gates of the factory, in an industrial area in the small town of Saint-Quentin-Fallavier, between Lyon and Grenoble.
A source cited by BFMTV also said a severed head had been put in front of the company, next to which was found an Islamist flag. CNN has not been able to confirm the report independently.
A man described as a witness, whose name was given as Patrice, also told BFMTV that a group of men carrying Islamist flags forced their way into the factory, beheaded a person and targeted gas tanks.
Le Monde newspaper cited unidentified sources as saying that two people rammed a vehicle into the building, causing the explosion. Banners in Arabic that haven’t yet been examined were found at the scene, the paper added.
The Paris prosecutor’s office said its anti-terrorism section was opening an investigation into the attack.
It is investigating possible murder and assassination attempts by organized gangs in relation to a terrorist enterprise; destruction and degradation resulting from explosive materials by organized gangs in relation to a terrorist enterprise; and terrorist conspiracy to commit crimes against people, the prosecutor’s office said.
Security stepped up
Air Products & Chemicals said in statement that its priority was to take care of its employees, “who have been evacuated from the site.”
Emergency services have contained the situation, the company said. “The site is secure. Our crisis and emergency response teams have been activated and are working closely with all relevant authorities.”
A spokeswoman for the company, Nicola Long, earlier said there had been an explosion, and a fire that was extinguished.
The company, which supplies gases for industrial use, said it had stepped up security at its other locations worldwide as a precaution.
President Barack Obama has been briefed on the attack in France, according to a senior administration official.
British Prime Minister David Cameron voiced his condolences for those affected by Friday’s attacks and expressed his country’s solidarity with the French people.
“I hope to speak later with the Tunisian government and again offer our sympathies and condolences and our solidarity in fighting this evil of terrorism,” he said.
France’s Parliament passed a new law this week that gives expanded powers to security services.