Man decapitated in terrorist attack in France

France has begun a criminal investigation after a decapitated body was found at the scene of a suspected Islamist attack on a US-owned gas factory near the south-eastern city of Lyon.

AFP reports that the victim was the boss of the suspect. They've been told that by a source close to the investigation.

The suspect was believed to have hung the man’s head on a fence or gate before driving a vehicle into a warehouse filled with gas canisters, causing an explosion, a local newspaper, Dauphiné Libéré, said. Two people were hurt in the blast.

One arrested man suspected to have rammed a car into the factory had been investigated over possible ties to Islamist radicals, officials said. President Francois Hollande said the aim was to blow up the factory.

Officials say the decapitated person was a local businessman. His head was found on a post at the gates to the Air Products gas factory in Saint-Quentin-Fallavier, some 40km from Lyon.

Officials say one man has been arrested.

Mr Hollande said the decapitated body had "inscriptions" on it. The French interior minister said: "A flag with Arabic writing on it was found at the scene". No further details have been released of the circumstances around the businessman's death.

At a press conference, Mr Hollande confirmed that two attackers had targeted the chemicals factory at around 10:00 local time.

“A TERRORIST ATTACK”

He said a car made it through the factory gates before ploughing into gas canisters, sparking an explosion that injured two people.  "We have no doubt that the attack was to blow up the building. It bears the hallmarks of a terrorist attack", he confirmed.

Speaking from the scene, France's Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said a number of people were in custody over the attack, including a 35-year-old man named as Yacine Sali.

Mr Sali, he said, had been "under investigation for radicalisation but this investigation was not renewed in 2008. He had no police record." But between 2011 and 2014, French security services had been investigating him for connections to Salafist groups in the Lyon area

The suspect's wife spoke to Europe 1 earlier on Friday and said he had left for his delivery job as normal and did not come home. She has since been taken into custody. Yassin Salih's sister is also now in custody. 

Police at the crime scene / Getty images

Mr Hollande, who left the EU summit in Brussels early to return to France, promised "action, prevention and dissuasion" to stop any more terrorist attacks.

"We all remember what happened before in our country. There is therefore a lot of emotion," he said referring to the attacks on Charlie Hebdo magazine and a Jewish supermarket in and around Paris in January that killed 17 people.

AIR PRODUCTS

Air Products makes gases and chemicals for a wide range of industries, including technology, energy, healthcare, food. It is based in the US, but has more than 20,000 employees in 50 countries around the world.

Ait Products factory

"We can confirm that an incident occurred at our facility in L'Isle-d'Abeau, France this morning," a company spokesperson said." Our priority at this stage is to take care of our employees, who have been evacuated from the site and all accounted for."

The French prosecutor confirmed in  a press conference that  43 people were in the factory at the time of the attack, and 13 employees are still in a state of shock.There were no more injuries so far

French Prime Minister Manuel Valls has ordered that security be stepped up at sensitive sites around Lyon.

SPAIN RAISES ALERT

Spain has raised its terror alert level from medium to high after the attacks in France, Tunisia and Kuwait.

Interior Minister Jorge Fernandez Diaz said: "Considering the proximity of our country to the places where some of these attacks took place, it has been proposed to raise the anti-terrorist alert".