French police have arrested five people, including one on a terror watch list, after discovering a suspected home-made bomb in one of Paris's most exclusive neighbourhoods at the weekend.
Police discovered two gas cylinders in the hallway of a building in the city's western 16th district in the early hours of Saturday morning and two others on the pavement outside.
A mobile phone attached to the cylinders is being investigated as a possible detonator, a security source told AFP.
Speaking to Franceinfo radio this morning, Interior Minister Gerard Collomb revealed that one of the arrested men was on a police terror watch list.
"That shows that the threat level in France is extremely high," added the minister, who said the incident and a knife attack in Marseille on Sunday that left two women dead underlined the importance of a tough new security law.
French politicians in the lower house of parliament are set to vote today on a new counter-terrorism law that rights groups and UN experts have criticised for giving too much power to police and local government officials.
In Saturday's incident, a resident alerted police after finding two gas cylinders in his building in the Porte d'Auteuil neighbourhood at around 4.30am, a source close to the probe said.
Police then found another two cylinders outside the building.
A total of 241 people have been killed in a wave of jihadist attacks in France since 2015.
On 12 September, Mr Collomb said that 12 planned attacks had been foiled since the beginning of the year.
Three suspected female jihadists were arrested in September last year after the discovery of gas cylinders in a car near Paris' Notre-Dame Cathedral.
