French police arrested 12 people and seized guns yesterday in anti-terror raids that came as Western security officials warn that Al-Qaeda may be planning Mumbai-style attacks in Europe.
Police from France’s anti-terrorism squad made nine arrests in the southern port of Marseille and in nearby Avignon, police said.
They seized “some weapons, including a Kalashnikov (rifle) and a pump-action shotgun, as well as ammunition”, said one official, adding that the nine were being investigated for suspected links to a “terrorist enterprise”.
In a separate operation also yesterday, French police arrested three men after finding their numbers in the mobile phone of a man of Algerian origin who was arrested at the weekend in Italy allegedly with a bomb-making kit.
Two of those suspects were arrested in Marseille and the third in Bordeaux in the southwest, said a police source. Another official stressed that the two sets of arrests were not linked.
The second raid came after the three men’s telephone numbers were found in the phone of Ryad Hannouni, who was picked up Saturday close to the central train station in the Italian city of Naples allegedly carrying a bomb-making kit.
The 28-year-old, for whom a European arrest warrant had been issued, was to be extradited to France, Ansa news agency said.
Officials said investigators wanted to question him on suspected links to militants coming to Europe from Afghanistan. Mr Hannouni had reportedly travelled from tribal zones around the Afghan-Pakistan border.
Yesterday’s arrests in France came as European and US security officials warned that Al-Qaeda may be planning Mumbai-style attacks with heavily-armed gunmen.
In the 2008 assault, 10 militants from Al-Qaeda-linked Lashkar-e-Taiba mowed down unarmed civilians at targets across the Indian city after arriving by boat from Karachi, leaving 166 dead.
Security analysts have specifically cited the Mumbai carnage as a possible model for further attacks. French Interior Minister Brice Hortefeux yesterday said that “all the Western countries are today aware of the reality of the threat” of attacks, adding that it “should neither be underestimated nor over-estimated”.
Following Japan and Sweden, Australia yesterday updated travel advice for more than 30 European countries after the US warned of a possible Al-Qaeda-linked plot to attack tourism hotspots.
The US State Department said in its alert on Sunday that attackers may use “a variety of means and weapons and target both official and private interests” in Europe.
Britain immediately backed the US alert and warned its own citizens of a “high threat of terrorism” in France and Germany.
US channel Fox News, citing unnamed intelligence officials, said militants had a drawn up a list of targets in the two countries.
These included Paris’s Eiffel Tower and Notre Dame Cathedral, and Berlin’s historic Brandenburg Gate, the city’s glass-roofed central railway station and the soaring television tower.