Police commandos arrested 19 suspected Islamic militants in raids on Friday in several French cities including Toulouse, where seven people were killed by an al Qaeda-inspired gunman this month. President Nicolas Sarkozy, whose firm handling of the response to the shooting spree may have improved his odds in an election race he has lagged in, said more raids would follow to get rid of "people who have no business in the country".
Interior Minister Claude Gueant said those arrested had paramilitary-type training although he did not say if they were planning an actual attack. "These are people who...claimed they were acting for an extremely violent, jihadist and combat ideology," Gueant told reporters after meeting Muslim associations in Paris.
Television channels showed images of the early morning raids, with agents from the RAID police commando unit and anti-terrorist specialists bashing down doors, smashing windows, and taking suspects away handcuffed and with their faces covered. Five rifles, three Kalashnikovs, four handguns and a bullet-proof vest were seized in the operation, Gueant said. A police source said about 20 people had been arrested in Toulouse in the south-west, Nantes in western France and also in the Paris region and the south-east. Sarkozy put the number of arrests at 19.
The suspects can be held for 96 hours under anti-terrorist laws. The daily Le Monde said the arrest order came under an investigation underway in Paris since March 8. The police source said the operation was not directly related to Mohamed Merah's killing spree in Toulouse, although Sarkozy ordered a crackdown on radical Islamists following that.
Merah was killed by police snipers last week after shooting dead three Jewish school children, a rabbi and three soldiers in attacks around Toulouse, turning internal security into a bigger campaign issue ahead of the presidential election. Polls showed that more than 70 percent of voters approved of Sarkozy's handling of the incident, reducing his chief rival, Socialist frontrunner Francois Hollande, to the role of bystander before the two-round election on April 22 and May 6.