Police arrested nine people and seized guns and ammunition in southern France in anti-terrorism raids, sources close to the investigations said on Tuesday.
Police made the arrests on Tuesday morning in the southern port city of Marseille and the nearby town of Avignon, the sources told AFP.
They seized "some weapons, including a Kalashnikov (rifle) and a pump-action shotgun, as well as ammunition," said one official close to the investigation.
In a separate operation also on Tuesday, French police arrested three men after finding their numbers in the mobile phone of a man of Algerian origin who was arrested at the weekend in Italy allegedly with a bomb-making kit.
France arrests not linked
Two of those suspects were arrested in the southern city of Marseille and the third in Bordeaux in the southwest, said a police source. Officials stressed that the two sets of arrests were not linked.
In the second raid, the three men’s phone numbers were found in the phone of Ryad Hannouni, who was picked up Saturday close to the central train station in the Italian city of Naples allegedly carrying a bomb-making kit.
The 28-year-old, for whom a European arrest warrant had been issued, was to be extradited to France, ANSA news agency said.
European and U.S. security officials, citing recent intelligence, say that al-Qaeda may be planning the 2008 Mumbai-style attacks with heavily-armed gunmen, a tactic that inflicts mass carnage and terror without the risks associated with bomb-making.
Australia earlier Tuesday updated travel advice for more than 30 European countries after the U.S. warned of a possible plot to attack tourism hotspots.
The foreign affairs department revised bulletins for countries across the continent warning of a potential threat to public transport and landmarks. However, the overall alert levels were left unchanged.
The United States "issued a travel alert alerting U.S. citizens of the potential for terrorist attacks in Europe, including the potential for terrorists to attack public transportation systems and other tourist infrastructure in European countries," the bulletins said.
Alerting citizens over possible attacks
Japan, Sweden and Britain have also alerted their citizens about possible attacks in Europe after the United States Sunday said extremists may use "a variety of means and weapons and target both official and private interests."
U.S. channel Fox News, citing unnamed intelligence officials, said militants had a list of targets including Paris’s Eiffel Tower and Notre Dame Cathedral, and Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate.
In the Mumbai assault, ten militants from al-Qaeda-linked Lashkar-e-Taiba mowed down unarmed civilians at targets across the Indian city after arriving by boat from Karachi, leaving 166 dead.
Inspired by the effect of Mumbai, al-Qaeda came close to pulling off a similar attack in Denmark last year, targeting the offices of the newspaper Jyllands-Posten, which had run controversial cartoons several years ago of the Prophet Mohammed.
Details of the plan emerged in the trial of David Headley, an American of Pakistani descent, who pleaded guilty to casing targets in Mumbai for Lashkar-e-Taiba.
In the Danish attack plan, Headley told prosecutors he pretended to be interested in buying ads in so he could carry out reconnaissance of the newspaper’s Copenhagen offices.
He was arrested at Chicago’s O’Hare airport last year as he was on his way to deliver 13 surveillance videos for the Danish plot.
Militants planned to enter the newspaper’s office, murder the staff and then wage a fight to the death with Danish police.
European and American police
Experts said would-be attackers would have some difficulty securing assault rifles in Europe, unlike South Asia or the United States where guns are more readily available.
Well-trained European special police squads also would likely be able to contain such an attack much faster than in Mumbai, where Indian police faced accusations of a slow response.
In a shooting rampage at Fort Hood in Texas last year, police arrived quickly and stopped the lone gunman within minutes.
American police were trained for such events, but not for a larger-scale assault similar to Mumbai involving teams of gunman with more elaborate plans, he added.
Any attack against European cities and the United States will likely rely on militants with Western passports, who can more easily avoid detection thanks to a "clean skin," while reinforcing al-Qaeda propaganda about a global struggle.
The mounting threat posed by "Western foreign fighters" has haunted security services since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and authorities have struggled to track suspects travelling to Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia to forge terror links.
According to Germany’s Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, some 200 Germans or foreigners living in Germany have spent time in Pakistan in a bid to undergo paramilitary training by Islamist groups.
Authorities have concrete evidence that 65 of them underwent such training, it said.