This Article is From Sep 24, 2017

200 Residents Evacuated After Car Found With Gas Cylinders In French City

A resident raised the alarm and the bomb squad was on site in the northern French city of Lille

200 Residents Evacuated After Car Found With Gas Cylinders In French City

French Police are verifying whether the gas cylinders were kept by terrorists (Representational)

Lille, France: Nearly 200 residents of a wealthy suburb of the northern French city of Lille were evacuated Saturday night after five gas cylinders were found in a car, police said, while playing down the likelihood of it being terrorist-related.

"There is a good chance that it is something fairly innocuous," a police source said.

A resident raised the alarm at around 10:30 pm and the bomb squad was on site in the suburb of Lambersart as a precaution.

At the end of August, a concert in the Dutch city of Rotterdam was cancelled at the last moment after a tip-off from Spanish police. The driver of a van carrying several gas cylinders near the venue was arrested but later released.

In June, a major bomb squad operation was launched after a vehicle with a dozen bottles of butane hidden under a tarpaulin was discovered in the Isere department of eastern France. It turned out that the driver was stealing from his employer, a freight company.

France has been under a state of emergency since Islamic State jihadists struck in Paris in November 2015, killing 130 people.

Since that large-scale attack and last year's Nice truck attack that killed 86, France has suffered a string of smaller assaults mainly targeting security forces.


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