French minister: Beheading suspect known to authorities

French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said multiple people are in custody after a terror attack on a gas factory left one person dead and several injured.

Cazeneuve said the suspect was believed to be from the area and had been flagged in 2006 for ties to Islamic extremists, but surveillance was dropped in 2008.

A severed head was posted at the factory’s entrance and Cazeneuve said authorities are still trying to identify the victim. Flags with Arabic writing were discovered nearby.

“People who could have participated in this abject crime are in custody after having been arrested,” he told journalists.

The attack began when a car crashed the gate and plowed into gas canisters, touching off an explosion at the factory near Lyon on Friday morning.

Earlier, French President Francois Hollande confirmed the incident was a “terrorist attack.”

Hollande, who was rushing back to France from an EU summit to deal with the crisis, added that the person who launched the attack has been identified and that there may have been a second attacker.

“This attack was in a vehicle driven by one person, perhaps accompanied by another, which rammed its way at high speed into this establishment which contained bottles of gas,” Hollande told a hastily-convened news conference.

“The intent was without doubt to cause an explosion. It was a terrorist attack.”

A source close to the investigation said the attacker drove a car into the gas plant, triggering the explosion.

“According to the initial findings of the enquiry, one or several individuals on board a vehicle drove into the factory. An explosion then took place,” said one source close to the enquiry.

“The decapitated body of a person was found nearby the factory but we do not yet know whether the body was transported to the place or not,” added this source, adding that a “flag with Arabic writing on it was found at the scene.”

One suspect entered the factory owned by American group Air Products and set off several small explosive devices, sources close to the investigation said, with several people hurt in the assault.

Police said it was unclear whether the attacker was acting alone, or had accomplices.

The man thought to be the person who carried out the attack has been arrested, according to sources close to the enquiry, who said he was known to the security services.

“We cannot say anything reliable yet about the identity of the person arrested who is refusing to speak and did not have any identity papers,” said a legal source.

The killing came nearly six months after the Islamist attacks in and around Paris that killed 17 people in January, starting with a shooting at satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and followed by an attack on a kosher supermarket in Paris that killed four Jewish men.