Suspected Paris terror cell was 'guided by IS in Syria'

One of those held in gas cylinder bomb plot was girlfriend of 2 jihadist murderers killed carrying out separate attacks earlier this year

An all-woman alleged terror cell arrested in Paris over a plot for detonate gas canisters near Notre Dame Cathedral was guided from Syria by the Islamic State group, France’s anti-terrorism prosecutor told a news conference Friday.

“The terrorist organization uses not only women, but young women, who get to know them and develop their plot from a distance,” Francois Molins said.

The failed attack near Notre Dame Cathedral was spearheaded by a group of women that included a 19-year-old whose written pledge of allegiance to the Islamic State group was found by police, a security official said Friday.

The teen, Ines Madani, stabbed a police officer with a knife and was shot in the leg Thursday night in a raid south of Paris, police said.

Molins said another of the women had been the girlfriend of two jihadists killed this year while carrying out attacks.

The unnamed woman had first been in a relationship with Larossi Abballa, who killed a couple, both members of the police force, at their Paris suburb home in June before he himself was shot dead. She then became the girlfriend of Adel Kermiche, who slit the throat of an elderly priest at his church in July, and who was also killed by police.

French police officers block the road leading to a crime scene the day after a knife-wielding attacker stabbed a senior police officer to death Monday evening outside his home in Magnanville, west of Paris, France, Tuesday, June 14, 2016. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus)

Abballa stabbed Jean-Baptiste Salvaing, 42, a police commander in the Paris suburb of Les Mureaux, outside his home on the night of June 13. He then went inside and took Salvaing’s partner and 3-year-old son hostage, before killing the woman. The terrorist made the declaration of allegiance to Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in exchanges with officers during a three-hour standoff, and had a list of other targets, including rappers, journalists, police officers and public officials, Molins said at the time.

84-year-old French priest Jacques Hamel was murdered in an apparent Islamic State terror attack on his church in the town of Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray, in Normandy on July 26, 2016 (Photo from Twitter)

Adel Kermiche and accomplice Abdel Malik Nabil Petitjean, both aged 19, were killed by police after a standoff outside the church they stormed during morning mass on July 26. They took at least five people hostage before slitting the of 85-year-old Rev. Jacques Hamel at his altar.

The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attack.