Four people including a 16-year-old girl have been arrested on suspicion of planning a suicide attack in Paris.

French prosecutors have said the group were arrested in Montpellier in the south of the country.

The teenager was the girlfriend of one of the other suspects, who is 22, according to reports.

Both are said to have been known to the authorities because of their links to radical Islam.

Image: The arrests were made in the southern French city of Montpellier

The four were allegedly planning to detonate one or more explosive belts in a tourist area of ​​the capital.


However, a specific target has not yet been established.

Explosives and computer equipment were discovered in a makeshift laboratory at one of the suspects' homes, according to the Paris prosecutor's office.

It said around 70 grams of the explosive TATP were found, as well as other bomb-making materials.

TATP is the same explosive used in the 2015 attack on Paris and the March 2016 attack in Brussels.

France has been targeted in a number of terror attacks, leading to a state of emergency being declared until after the Presidential elections in July.

Three co-ordinated teams were said to behind a series of shootings and bombings in Paris which killed 130 people and critically injured another 100 in November 2015.

In July, 2016, a 19-tonne truck was driven through a Nice tourist area, killing 86 people.

Last week, a soldier shot and wounded an attacker armed with a machete outside the Louvre museum in Paris while shouting "Allahu Akbar" (God is greatest).

Investigators have identified the suspect as a 29-year-old Egyptian Abdullah Reda al Hamamy, and are trying to establish if he has any links to extremist groups.

A two-and-a-half metre high glass security barrier is to be constructed around the Eiffel Tower because of the fear of terror attacks.