Residents in the Iraqi town of Sinjar after it was captured fom Islamixc State by Kurdish peshmerga

Five men and one woman were arrested near the central French city of Lyon on Tuesday, suspected of planning to go to join armed Islamists in Syria. Some of them were also believed to have been planning attacks in France, notably against swingers' clubs, sources said.

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The five men, aged 22-37, and the woman, who is 20, had bought coach tickets to go to Istanbul via Bulgaria, sources told the AFP news agency.

Useful information was reported to have been identified on computers and telephones during house searches but no weapons had been found on Tuesday morning.

Several of the suspects were already known to police for their radical Islamist sympathies but none had been arrested before.

The investigation was apparently launched in December, based on a tipoff that also indicated that some of the suspects were planning "violent action" in France with swingers' clubs the top of their list of targets.

More than 1,800 French nationals or residents have either been to fight with jihadist movements, such as the Islamic State armed group, in Syria and Iraq, or have planned or are on their way to do so, according to public prosecutor François Molins.

To read our reports of the November 2015 Paris attacks and their aftermath, click here.

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