French PM warns of new attacks being planned as over 150 suspects raided

PARIS — French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said Monday that authorities believe new terror attacks are being planned against France and other European countries, as police carried out wide-ranging raids in the aftermath of Friday’s terror rampage in Paris.

“We know that operations were being prepared and are still being prepared, not only against France but other European countries too,” he said and revealed that police had carried out “more than 150” raids on suspected Islamists since the attacks on Paris.

A source in the southeastern city of Lyon said an arsenal of weapons had been seized there.

Valls also told French media the attacks were planned in Syria.

France would be living with the threat of terror attacks “for a long time,” he said.

Valls warned that more attacks could hit “in the coming days, in the coming weeks.”

Valls said he was struck by the fact that young people had been targeted in Friday’s attacks on a concert hall, bars and restaurants and outside the Stade de France stadium, which left 129 people dead.

“Once again the terrorists have attacked France, the French people, young people. Many young people are dead,” he said.

People gather at a makeshift memorial in front of Le Carillon restaurant in the 10th district of Paris, on November 15, 2015. (AFP/Alain Jocard)

He added that high-level climate talks later this month would go on as planned, but concerts and other festive events around the meeting were “without a doubt canceled.”

He added that no delegation had pulled out of the talks in the wake of the attacks.

Police sources in Paris said “several dozen” pre-dawn raids were carried out in French cities on Monday, including in Bobigny, an eastern suburb of the capital.

Thirteen raids were carried out around the southeastern French city of Lyon, a local police source said.

They led to five arrests and the seizure of “an arsenal of weapons,” including a rocket launcher, a Kalashnikov assault rifle, bulletproof vests, handguns and combat gear, the source said.

French soldiers patrol at the Eiffel Tower which remained closed on the first of three days of national mourning in Paris, Sunday, Nov. 15, 2015. (AP/Peter Dejong)

Police also carried out raids in Toulouse in southwestern France, where at least three people were arrested, according to the local prosecutor’s office.

In the Alpine city of Grenoble, according to the local newspaper Le Dauphine Libere, at least half a dozen people were arrested and guns and money were seized.

Police have additional powers under a state of emergency declared after the coordinated attacks in Paris on Friday that also saw more than 350 injured.