ISIS plants decapitated body in attack on US-owned French factory
The French police have detained several suspects after one or two men waving Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) flags and shouting Islamist slogans rammed a car triggering a large explosion at an American-owned liquid gas factory near the southern French city of Grenoble Friday, June 26. One person was killed and two injured. A decapitated body covered in Arabic writing was left in the factory and a severed head hung on the railings outside. Police named the attacker arrested as Yassin Sahli along with several accomplices. He was under surveillance from 2006 to 208 as an Islamist radical. The decapitated man was his boss at work. French President Francois Hollande speaking at a news conference in the European Summit in Brussels said, "The attack was of a terrorist nature since a body was discovered, decapitated and with inscriptions." He has called an urgent meeting of security chiefs on his return to Paris later Friday.
The factory is owned by Air Products, a US-based industrial gases technology company.
Grenoble has a large Jewish community, whose institutions like other Jewish centers across France have had armed police protection since the deadly January 7 terrorist attacks in Paris on the Charlie Hebdo magazine and the Jewish kosher supermarket.
Immediately after the attack Friday, French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve ordered security tightened security at “sensitive sites” across the country, in case the gas factory attack heralded a multiple series in several locations. The sensitive sites include Jewish schools and synagogues and Paris thoroughfares where armed soldiers and police are on patrol.