Officers find more explosive caches after discovery of Paris `bomb factory`

Three suspects have been arrested after police investigating a suspected jihadist bomb factory near Paris found more ingredients which could have been used to make the explosive device known as TATP The ingredients were found on Thursday (September 7) during a search of an enclosed parking space belonging to the owner of the flat in the Parisian suburb of Villejuif where officers discovered bomb-making materials the day before. The possible factory was discovered when a plumber contacted police after spotting chemicals used in explosives and electrical components for detonators in the property. The plumber had been called by the residents’ association after neighbours complained of a water leak in the flat. He could not get in but looked through the window and saw the equipment. On Wednesday, French officers located gas canisters and electrical wiring, along with similar ingredients required for the TATP explosive, commonly used by the so-called Islamic State group (Daesh). Three men aged 36, 27 and 47, including the flat’s owner, have been arrested. French Interior Minister Gérard Collomb said that they claimed that they were making explosives for a bank robbery. “But what we can see is that they were linked to terrorism, and that is the line of inquiry we are following,” he said. “We’ve seen that there were calls exchanged” with someone in the war zone in Syria, Mr Collomb added. The arrests raised questions about whether the suspects might be linked to a jihadist cell in Spain that carried out two vehicle attacks in Barcelona and Cambrils last month. Some of the extremists behind the violence in Spain, mostly Moroccan nationals who were also preparing bombs made with TATP, visited Paris on August 11 and 12, about a week before their deadly rampage. “It is possible there were links but honestly I don’t know,” Mr Collomb said. The Spanish attackers stayed in a hotel in the Parisian suburb of Malakoff a short drive from where the suspected bomb factory was discovered in Villejuif. After buying a camera and leaving their hotel, Mr Collomb said the Spanish jihadists “spent a long time in front of the Eiffel Tower… We have it all from their phone data”. France has been under a state of emergency since Daesh gunmen launched a series of simultaneous raids on bars, the national stadium and the Bataclan concert hall in Paris in November 2015, leaving 130 people dead. Since those atrocities and a truck attack in Nice in July 2016 that killed 86 people, France has suffered a string of smaller assaults mainly targeting police and security forces.