An Islamist suspected of a grenade attack on a Jewish market was shot and killed by police in Strasbourg and 11 others detained in what prosecutors called a “vast anti-terrorist operation”.
Elite police squads carried out simultaneous operations against a network of radical Islamists in the Paris region and in Strasbourg, Nice and Cannes early on Saturday.
The raids were connected to a September 19 incident in the Paris suburb of Sarcelles in which two men, including the suspect killed on Saturday, threw a grenade into a Jewish kosher supermarket, wounding one person and causing minor damage, said Paris prosecutor Francois Molins.
“A vast anti-terrorist operation was conducted this morning,” Mr Molins said.
He named the deceased as French citizen Jeremie Sidney, 33, who he said had spent two years in prison for drug-dealing and belonged to a radical Islamist movement.
“Jeremie Sidney appeared to be a delinquent converted to radical Islam who belonged to a group suspected, without certainty, to want to enter into jihad,” he said.