French police arrest second 15-year-old in days suspected of plotting Isis terror attack

A 15-year-old French boy allegedly planning to carry out a terror attack was arrested on Wednesday (14 September).

The teenager was in contact with French Islamic State extremist Rachid Kassim, who is believed to have incited or ordered the murder of two French police officials in their Magnanville home in June and a priest leading mass in a church near Rouen in July, police sources told AFP.

Police searched the teenager's home in north-eastern Paris to establish if he was planning an attack.
The teenager was not previously known to police or intelligence services, BFMTV reported. In conversation with Kassim, he had offered to carry out a terror attack, according to the news station.

They type of attack he allegedly planned has not been made public, but he had reportedly attempted to obtain a weapon.

It comes two days after another 15-year-old from eastern Paris was charged with conspiring to commit terrorist acts. He had reportedly `described plans to commit a stabbing attack on Telegram, an encrypted messaging app used by Islamic extremists.

He had also allegedly been in contact with Kassim, a 29-year-old former social worker from the Loire Valley who is believed to be at the heart of a network of French extremists attempting to incite supporters on French soil to commit terror attacks.

He was also reportedly in contact with a group of four French women arrested after a car packed with gas canister was found near Paris' Notre Dame Cathedral.

One of the alleged members of the group reportedly told police that they had planned to target the Eiffel Tower.

Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said on Wednesday that the intelligence services were "working harder than ever" to prevent assaults incited by "a number of characters in Syria who used encrypted methods to call on young people to carry out attacks".