Nearly 3,000 people died in the September 11 attacks in 2001

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French officials apparently fear that last week's attempt to kill hundreds of passengers on a Paris-bound train was the first in a series of terror plots.

They are preparing for an imminent atrocity on the scale of al-Qaeda's 2001 attack on the World Trade Center in New York.

Nearly 3,000 people were killed in the September 11 tragedy after terrorists flew two planes into the towers, one into the Pentagon and another into the ground.

A security source said: “There are a lot of alienated fourth-generation immigrant kids in the suburbs and the prospect of radicalisation is increasingly likely.

“The idea that attacks like the one on the train are carried out by individuals on their own is not credible.

"We’re dealing with highly-organised networks of militant Islamists embarked on a campaign of violence and determined to intensify it.”