French police detain terror suspect who called ambulance

French authorities said they fortuitously averted an imminent terrorist attack on at least one Catholic church after a 24-year old Algerian suspect shot himself in the leg by accident and called for an ambulance.

The scare has highlighted cracks in France's unprecedented security measures put in place in the wake of the deadly Charlie Hebdo assaults in January, and has fuelled debate over forthcoming government legislation designed to beef up the means of intelligence services.

The suspect, an electronics student in Paris, was found bleeding in the 13th arrondissement on Sunday morning. Alerted by emergency medical staff, the police quickly discovered weapons and police equipment in his car and apartment, including four automatic guns and several bulletproof vests.

"A document was also found showing without any doubt that the individual was planning to carry out an attack imminently," Bernard Cazeneuve, interior minister, said on Wednesday, adding the suspect was probably targeting one or two churches.

The alleged would-be terrorist was known to intelligence services since he had expressed an intention to travel to Syria last year, Mr Cazeneuve said. According to daily newspaper Le Monde, he may have spent a week in Turkey as early as February this year, soon after 17 were killed in attacks on satirical publication Charlie Hebdo, against police officers and on a Jewish supermarket.

But nothing "justified the opening of legal investigation", Mr Cazeneuve said. The suspect had been under light surveillance.

Investigators have established links with "someone who could be located in Syria", and who may have asked "explicitly to target a church", Paris prosecutor Francois Morins said on Wednesday. Mr Morins said investigators found documents in Arabic about al-Qaeda and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isis). The home of the suspect's sister has been searched, Mr Cazeneuve also said.

The 24-year old man is also suspected to have killed Aurelie Chatelain, a 32-year-old mother of one, who was found dead in the passenger seat of her car in Villejuif, a southern suburb of Paris, on Sunday morning. Traces of her blood were found on the suspect's coat while his DNA had been discovered in her car, Mr Morins said.

The arrest comes as lawmakers are debating a bill to increase the surveillance powers of the French intelligence services. The bill, which would give them more tools to spy on digital and mobile communications and install recording devices in homes, among other measures, has triggered opposition from civil rights groups, judges and lawyers because they say it applies to other areas than terrorism and gives too much power to the government in deciding who to place under surveillance.

"We must alway improve the capacities of our intelligence [services]," President Francois Hollande said on Wednesday. "I wish this bill to be adopted."

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