A decapitated body covered in Arabic writing was found at a US gas company in southeast France yesterday, police sources and French media said, after an assailant rammed a car into the premises, triggering an explosion.
The attacker survived the blast and was arrested. The identity of the beheaded victim was not clear but French media said it was a manager of a local transport company, on the site for a delivery.
Police sources earlier said the decapitated body was found at the site, along with a flag bearing Islamist inscriptions.
Local newspaper Le Dauphine said the head covered in Arabic writing was found on a fence.
France, which has deployed aircraft to the international coalition fighting Islamic State insurgents in Iraq, has long been named on Islamist sites as a primary target for attacks.
Speaking from a European Union summit in Brussels, French President Francois Hollande described it as a terrorist attack and said all measures would be taken to stop any future strikes on a country still reeling from Islamist assaults in January.
Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said one suspect, named as Yassin Sahli, had been arrested, and police were holding other suspected accomplices. He said Sahli did not have a criminal record but had been under surveillance from 2006 to 2008 on suspicion of having become radicalised.
“Two individuals deliberately rammed a car into the gas containers to trigger an explosion,” a police source said of the attack.
However the number of assailants was thrown into doubt, with Hollande saying it could have been either one or two.
French media said Sahli was a 35-year-old professional driver who lived in the Lyon suburbs. There was no official confirmation of that.
The attack underlined the difficulty of protecting so-called “soft” targets against strikes by assailants operating by themselves or in small undercover cells.