Foiled France terror attack ‘was to target theme park and cops’ before seven suspects arrested

A FOILED terror attack on France was to target a theme park and police officer, it has been reported today.

More details are beginning to emerge about the plot which cops say was averted after seven suspects were arrested in raids on addresses in Strasbourg and Marseille over the weekend.

An area with a high concentration of officers was mooted as one possible target by French news outlet iTele.

And local media is also claiming terrorists were planning to attack a family amusement park.

It is not know which theme park would have been targeted, but France is home to several, including Disneyland Paris, which is popular with Brits and other foreign tourists.

More details are also beginning to filter out about the suspects.

One of those arrested, named as Yasin B, 38, is said to have been a school official who travelled to Syria via Cyprus in 2015 for training in combat and concealment.

French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve claimed on Monday that the arrests prevented “a terrorist act that had been envisaged for a long time”.

And he said the ensuing police probe would show whether “the foiled attack was a coordinated attack aiming to target several sites simultaneously on our soil”.

The raids were carried out overnight Saturday to Sunday following an eight-month investigation by security services.

Cazeneuve linked the arrests to raids carried out shortly before the Euro 2016 football championship hosted by France in June.

The suspects were of French, Moroccan and Afghan origin and aged from 29 to 37 years.

Two of those arrested were picked up in Marseille, with the others in the eastern city of Strasbourg, Cazeneuve said.

Six of the suspects were not previously known to intelligence services, he added, while one was a Moroccan who had been flagged to France by a foreign government.

The arrests came five days before the opening of the famed Christmas market in Strasbourg, which attracts tourists from across Europe and was the target of a failed extremist plot in 2000.

Cazeneuve said 43 people have been arrested in November alone as part of anti-terror operations following deadly Islamic State attacks on France over the past two years.

A total of 418 people had been arrested for suspected links to terror networks since the start of the year, he added.

News of the latest arrests comes just days after the Bataclan concert hall in Paris re-opened its doors, one year after ISIS jihadis slaughtered 90 people there.

Sting paid tribute to the victims of the massacre as he performed at the gig to re-open the venue earlier this month.

In total, 130 people were killed in a series of coordinated attacks across Paris last November.

Only two days ago, a leading terror expert warned ISIS has up to 80 militants stationed across Europe.

Dutch counter-terrorism coordinator Dick Schoof said would-be jihadists are heeding calls from the group’s leaders “asking them not to come to Syria and Iraq, but to prepare attacks in Europe”.

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