Two women who sought to blow up a home-made car bomb outside Notre-Dame cathedral only failed because they tried to set it on fire with “the wrong type of fuel”, a Paris court has heard.

In the first high-profile case involving female jihadists in France, the women stand accused of seeking to detonate gas cylinders in the boot of their car outside the famed cathedral three years ago.

The country was reeling at the time from a wave of Islamist terror attacks, which have since 2015 killed over 250 people.

Two of the women, who both pledged allegiance to Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil), risk life in prison for their alleged roles in the plot, with another two allegedly accomplices facing the same sentence for later trying to help one of the women escape.

A fifth woman faces a possible 30-year sentence, while a sixth is being tried for failing to alert authorities to the planned attack.