Terror attack on Riviera ‘foiled’

AUTHORITIES are convinced that they have foiled what they described as an “imminent” terror attack planned on the French Riviera.

Counter-terrorism officers found 900g of explosive in an apartment Mandelieu-La- Napoule, near Cannes. The property belonged to a 23-year-old man who had returned from Syria, a source close to the case told AFP.

He had been arrested a few days earlier.

The material was found to be TATP, a rudimentary explosive that can be made at home. It had been divided into three cans, one of which was surrounded by screws and nails fixed with tape. A weapon and computer equipment were also seized.

The suspect is linked to the so-called Cannes-Torcy cell.

Police dismantled the cell in 2012 in a wave of arrests. At the time, the public prosecutor of Paris, François Molins, described Cannes-Torcy as the most dangerous terror cell operating in France since the mid-1990s.

Members of this group are suspected of planning a grenade attack on a Jewish business in Sarcelles (Val-d'Oise) in September 2012.