Police arrest three women in connection to Notre Dame incident

French police have arrested three radicalised young women, who authorities say were probably preparing “new and imminent violent action.”

The women were arrested at a railway station south east of Paris after they were linked to the discovery of a car packed with gas cylinders left near Notre Dame cathedral last weekend, the French government said.

The interior minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, said there had been a “race against time” to catch the three women, aged 19, 23 and 39, who he described as “radicalised and fanaticised”.

One of the women stabbed a police officer with a knife during the arrest, injuring him in the shoulder. Other police officers opened fire and the woman was injured.

The owner of the car used in the incident, who was on an intelligence services watchlist of people suspected of religious radicalisation, was initially arrested but was later released due to having gone to police on Sunday to report that his daughter had disappeared with his car.

Officials said his daughter, 19, was known to police for wanting to leave for Syria, where scores of radicalised people of French and other nationalities have joined Daesh.

Besides the three women, officials said a 27-year-old man and a 26-year-old woman were detained on Wednesday south of Paris and a second couple, a 34-year-old man and a 29-year-old woman, was detained in the same case on Tuesday.

According to the Guardian, Florence Berthout, the mayor of Paris’s fifth arrondissement, said earlier this week that the Notre Dame car incident highlighted the need to increase security in the French capital. “Police and army staffing must be stepped up,” she said, adding that the vehicle was left in a zone where parking is strictly prohibited and it had remained there for about two hours before it came to the attention of police.