France's interior minister has said intelligence officers have foiled a terror plot inspired by the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Centre in New York City.

According to Le Parisien, he was looking for a weapon to help with hijacking a plane.

The man was charged on 26 September and is suspected of wanting to perpetrate an attack comparable to the events of 11 September, 2001.

The man was arrested before the attack on the Paris police headquarters on 3 October, when an IT specialist with suspected Islamist sympathies and who had security clearances killed three officers and one civilian employee before he was shot dead by another officer.

France's interior minister Christophe Castaner told France 2: "Just before (that attack) there was a 60th attempted attack since 2013.


60 attentats ont été déjoués depuis 2013 et chaque semaine des individus sont interpellés.

Nos services de renseignement œuvrent, quotidiennement, à notre protection.

Je veux leur rendre hommage et leur dire ce soir, à nouveau, toute ma reconnaissance.#VALP pic.twitter.com/paUu8zNVr0 — Christophe Castaner (@CCastaner) October 17, 2019

"An individual who wanted to draw inspiration from 9/11 and planes that destroyed the towers of the World Trade Center (...) was stopped by our services.

"It was his project, he was organising himself like this and our services have done the necessary to get him arrested."

In a tweet, he added: "60 attacks have been foiled since 2013 and every week people are arrested. Our intelligence services work daily on our protection. I want to pay tribute to them and tell them tonight, again, all my gratitude."

More than 230 people have been killed in the last four years in France from Islamist militant attacks.

In November 2015 Islamic State in Syria claimed it was behind co-ordinated strikes across Paris, carried out in part by French-born fighters, which killed 130 people.

According to Reuters, officials fear dozens of French nationals held in Kurdish-controlled camps could escape and return home after the Turkish offensive in northern Syria.