Three suspects have been arrested in connection with a parcel bomb detonated in the French city of Lyon on Friday, authorities confirmed to ABC News.
France’s Minister of the Interior Christophe Castaner announced a 24-year-old man had been arrested Monday around 10 a.m. on a street in Lyon. The Paris prosecutor’s office also confirmed to ABC News that two more suspects, a man and a woman, had also been arrested and placed in detention.
The bomb was detonated on Friday afternoon near a bakery on the busy Victor Hugo street in France‘s third-biggest city, wounding 13. Among the wounded, 11 were treated at a local hospital. Several required operations to remove shrapnel from the blast.
Surveillance footage released by police shows one suspect arriving on foot around 5:25 pm and leaving a paper bag on the floor that detonated about three minutes later, smashing the bakery window to pieces.
Due to the nature of the attack — broad daylight, a crowded pedestrian area — anti-terrorist police took over the investigation Friday evening.
More than 90 investigators were mobilized, as well as 30 forensic experts, as police launched a public appeal for information related to the attack. Although anti-terror police were responsible for the investigation, there hasn’t yet been a claim of responsibility for the attack.
On Saturday, Paris prosecutor Remy Heitz told journalists that at the scene of the blast investigators they found screws, batteries, metal balls and a remote-triggering mechanism. The National Police force had released grainy surveillance-footage images of the suspects on Twitter as part of the effort to locate suspects.
France has been on alert since a series of attacks in Paris in 2015 that killed 130 people and injured hundreds more. Last December, a gunman killed several people and injured a dozen more at a Christmas Market in Strasbourg, in eastern France.
Colis piégé à #Lyon : un suspect vient d’être interpellé.
Je salue la mobilisation de la SDAT, de la police judiciaire de Lyon et de la DGSI, co-saisies par la section antiterroriste du parquet de Paris.
Leur action conjointe est déterminante.
In central France, Lyon has a population of about 500,000, trailing Paris (2.2 million) and Marseilles (850,000).
Lyon, home to perhaps the best club soccer team on the planet, is scheduled to host the Women’s World Cup final on July 7.
