Beheading And Blast In France Terror Attack
A terror suspect has been arrested for beheading his boss and setting off an explosion at a chemical factory in France, prosecutors say.
The victim's severed head had Arabic writing scrawled across it and was found on a fence next to two jihadi banners at the premises in Saint-Quentin-Fallavier in southeastern France.
Yassin Salhi, 35, drove a delivery van into gas canisters at the factory, triggering the explosion, prosecutors said.
He was apprehended at the scene by a firefighter. Prosecutors said it is still unclear as to whether there was an accomplice.
His sister, wife and one other individual have since been arrested.
Salhi, a father-of-three, worked for the 55-year-old victim, who was in charge of a local delivery company.
The attack happened shortly before a gunman killed tourists, including Britons, at a Tunisian resort popular and a mosque was blown up in Kuwait .
Before she was arrested, Salhi's wife told radio station Europe 1 : "We are Muslim. We observe Ramadan...We have three children. We live a normal life."
Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve, speaking from the scene about 35km (22 miles) away from Lyon, described the attack as "barbarous" and a "terrible terrorist crime".
He said Salhi, who did not have a criminal record, had been known to foreign intelligence services and may have been radicalised.
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The suspect, who lives in Lyon, was initially flagged as an extremist in 2006 and then police monitoring dropped off two years later, according to Mr Cazeneuve.
Describing the attacks, which were partly caught on CCTV, prosecutor Francois Molins said a delivery van routinely entered the factory premises at 9.28am local time.
A minute before the explosion, at 9.36am, CCTV captured the van being driven towards an open building, which housed cannisters of gas and liquid.
Mr Molins said after firemen arrived at the scene, the driver was found in another building "while he was trying to open cannisters of acetone".
The victim's decapitated body and a knife were found near the van. The head of the victim, not seen by the camera, was found on a fence with two Islamist flags.
Mr Molins said: "We are looking at an attempt of murder and murder and an endeavour of a terrorist attack."
Employees at US-owned factory Air Products, based in Allentown, Pennsylvania, are said to be "very shocked".
A statement from the company read: "Our priority at this stage is to take care of our employees, who have been evacuated from the site and all accounted for.
"Our crisis and emergency response teams have been activated and are working closely with all relevant authorities."
Mr Hollande has cut short all of his engagements at the EU summit in Belgium to return to France for emergency talks.
He said the security level in the region of Rhone-Alpes has been raised to "attack" for the next three days.
"The attack was of a terrorist nature since a body was discovered, decapitated and with inscriptions," Mr Hollande told a news conference in Brussels.
He added that a considerable police force had been deployed in the region and other industrial sites protected to avoid any further incidents.
David Cameron has spoken to Mr Hollande in Brussels to express his sympathies at what Downing Street called an "appalling" attack.
A White House spokesman said US law enforcement officials were in touch with their French counterparts.
It comes nearly six months after the Islamist attacks in and around Paris that killed 17 people in January, including the shooting at satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo .
