Five men arrested this week in two French cities were planning a terror attack in France as early as next week and were receiving their orders from an Daesh group member based in Iraq or Syria, Paris public prosecutor Francois Molins said Friday.
Molins said police had found automatic weapons after raids in Strasbourg and Marseille and the group was planning to strike on Dec 1.
Seven suspects were arrested in police raids last weekend following an eight-month investigation by security services, although two were later released.
The five were arrested on Sunday, four of them in the eastern city of Strasbourg, and one in the southern city of Marseille.
Molins said the Strasbourg “commando” of four was plotting a terror act on Dec. 1 but that investigators haven’t yet determine which was “the specific chosen target among all those considered by the group.”
The other five — four Frenchmen and a Moroccan — appeared in court before anti-terrorism judges on Friday, Molins said at a press conference.
He said the five men were “given guidance remotely” from an Daesh member based in Iraq or Syria and that they had a “clear will to find and to identify targets to commit an act in the very short term.” Investigators found on one suspect’s USB stick communications of GPS coordinates.
The five men, he said, “had common instructions to obtain weapons, instructions given by a ordering person from the Iraqi-Syrian zone through encrypted applications popular among terrorists.”
Molins was speaking to reporters the day after anti-terrorism authorities took the unusual step of holding the men in custody without charge beyond the normal maximum period, relying on a recent anti-terrorism measure.
France remains under a state of emergency imposed after Daesh attacks in Paris in November 2015 that killed 130 people.
France foiled suspected Daesh plot directed from abroad
Investigators established that the Strasbourg cell was planning an attack on Dec.1 on one of a number of possible targets, although Molins admitted authorities have so far been “unable to determine the exact one.” The cell’s members researched “a dozen sites” online including the Christmas market on the Champs-Elysees, the Disneyland Paris theme park, cafe terraces in the northeast of the capital, the Paris criminal police headquarters and a metro station, a police source said on Thursday.
France has been under a state of emergency since January 2015 when extremists carried out the first of three large-scale attacks in the country.

No terror link in woman’s murder
Some 100 police officers are searching for a gunman suspected of stabbing an elderly woman to death in a retirement home for Catholic missionaries in southern France.
Investigators probing the killing of the worker at a Christian missionary retirement home in southern France believe it was a local crime and are not treating it as a terror attack, a prosecutor said on Friday.
The death set nerves jangling in France late Thursday after a string of militant atrocities, but local prosecutor Christophe Barret said police believed it was not “terrorism.”
“We are moving toward the idea of local crime, someone who was in the area of this home,” Barret told reporters, adding that a replica gun that fires pellets had been found in a vehicle parked nearby.
A man aged around 45 who lives in the village of Montferrier-les-Lez where the retirement home is located has been identified as a suspect, a source close to the case told AFP, asking not to be named.
Witnesses had reported that the killer appeared to have been carrying a shotgun when he burst into the nursing home on Thursday evening before stabbing a 54-year-old worker to death.
More than 130 police backed by a helicopter were searching for the main suspect on Friday after an unsuccessful manhunt overnight, local senior police officer Jean-Philippe Lecouffe said.
Extremists have carried out three large-scale attacks and a series of killings in France since January 2015, including the murder of an elderly priest in his church in July.
A spokesman for the gendarmerie, or military police, said on Friday the searches are continuing in a larger area, with help from police dogs, around the village of Montferrier-sur-Lez, near the city of Montpellier.
He said all possible motives for the killing are being explored and he couldn’t rule out a terrorist act at this point. He was not authorized to be publicly named.
The identity of the masked assailant, believed to be armed with a shotgun and a knife, remains unclear.
The body of the woman was found late Thursday, gagged and tied up outside the building with three stab wounds.

Source: Arab News