France on High Alert After Decapitated Body Found at Scene of Factory Attack

France has raised its security alert to the highest level after police discovered a decapitated body and flags with Arabic inscriptions following an attack in which a man seemingly tried to blow up a factory belonging to a US gas company.

A suspect arrested at the scene at Saint-Quentin-Fallavier, near Lyon in south-west France, was named by the French prosecutor as 35-year-old Yassin Salhi, an employee at a transport company run by the victim. The suspect was known to people at the Air Products factory because he came in regularly for deliveries, the prosecutor said.

The victim’s head was found hanging on a fence next to two inscribed flags, with the rest of his body inside the factory.

“It is a terror attack. There is no doubt about it,” the French president, François Hollande, told reporters in Brussels before leaving a European council summit to return to Paris. France’s interior minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, said Sahli had previously faced investigation over radicalisation, although he had no police record. The prosecutor said that between 2011 and 2014, French security services had been investigating Salhi for connections to salafist groups in the Lyon area.

It remained unclear whether any Islamist motivation for the attack might be mixed with personal grudges. There is no evidence it was coordinated or connected with the Tunisian beach shootings or a suicide bombing at a Kuwaiti mosque during Friday prayers.

Hollande led a security meeting at the Elysée palace, saying afterwards he had raised the security alert in the south-east region to maximum. A priority, he added, was to determine if the alleged attacker had accomplices.

The suspect’s wife was later arrested, as was his sister and an unidentified man reportedly seen driving past the Air Products site several times before the attack. Earlier, a woman identifying herself as Sahli’s wife told Europe 1 radio that she and the couple’s three children had known nothing of the planned attack. “My heart is about to give out,” she said.

The suspect was believed to have hung his manager’s head on a fence before driving a vehicle into a warehouse filled with gas canisters, causing an explosion, a local newspaper, Dauphiné Libéré, said. Two people were hurt in the blast.

Security officials told Associated Press the attacker had seemingly hoped to cause a far bigger explosion with his actions, believing the canisters were more combustible than they proved. Hollande said the apparent intention of the attack had been to blow up the factory.

Gérard Larcher, the centre-right president of the French Sénat, the upper house of parliament, arrived at the scene on Friday afternoon, saying he had spoken to the local public prosecutor and members of France’s anti-terrorist brigade in Paris.

He said the attacker was known at the gas storage unit where he made deliveries. “This is why he had access to the site,” Larcher said. “There is a very strong sense of shock,” he added. Larcher paid tribute to a firefighter who reportedly stopped the attacker blowing up a stock of gas bottles.

Mehdi, a 23-year-old Muslim man who lives 100 metres from the depot, said he was furious that “these people claim to be Muslims”.

“I am a young Muslim,” he said. “I am keeping Ramadan right now. It is Friday. To carry out this attack on a Friday during the holy month is not respectful of Islam. These people may call themselves Muslims but they are not. I say to them, you do not have the right to cut off someone’s head, you do not have the right to explode anything near our homes where our children live.

“We have French, Turks, Arabs, Chinese, Cambodians living around here. There is no more tension than anywhere else,” Mehdi said, adding that he feared the attack would bring reprisals against the Muslim community in France.

Air Products confirmed there had been an incident at its factory and said all staff had been evacuated.

“We can confirm that an incident occurred at our facility in L’Isle-d’Abeau, France this morning,” a statement said. “Our priority at this stage is to take care of our employees, who have been evacuated from the site and all accounted for. Emergency services are on site and have contained the situation. The site is secure. Our crisis and emergency response teams have been activated and are working closely with all relevant authorities.”

France has been on alert for possible Islamist-related attacks since gunmen killed 17 people in January in assaults on the offices of the Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine and a Jewish food store.

Hollande said the response to such attacks should be measured. He said: “We all remember what has happened in our country, and in other countries. There is a lot of emotion, but emotion is not the only answer. We need action, deterrence, and we need to spread our values and to never give in to fear.”

Air Products, based in Pennsylvania, supplies gases, chemicals and associated equipment. It has 20,000 employees and outlets in 50 countries.