Five terrorist attacks in France ‘foiled’ since Charlie Hebdo shootings

Five terrorist attacks in France have been foiled since the Charlie Hedbo shootings in January, France’s Prime Minister Manuel Valls has revealed. The announcement comes after a 24-year-old Franco-Algerian IT student was held over an alleged plot to attack a church in Villejuif, a commune in the southern suburbs of Paris. It was not revealed whether the four other attacks were linked to the arrested suspect, named in French reports as Sid Ahmed Ghlam. Investigators have claimed they found evidence on his computer suggesting he was in contact with a man in Syria “who clearly asked him to target a church,” Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said.

Numerous attacks had already been foiled; five if you take into account the attack which happily did not take place at Villejuif.

French PM Manuel Valls

Alongside the alleged church plot to attack the church, Ghlam is also accused of killing a young woman, named as 32-year-old Aurelie Chatelain, shortly before his arrest. He was detained in Paris over the weekend after he apparently shot himself in the leg by accident and called for an ambulance, French officials said on Wednesday. Police found a trail of blood leading to his car with was said to contain loaded guns and notes about potential targets. A search of his apartment uncovered more weapons, police said. The documents “prove, without any ambiguity, that the individual was preparing an imminent attack, in all probability, against one or two churches,”  Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said.

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