Europe on high alert as French train gunman ‘had been to Syria’

A gunman who opened fire on a high-speed train bound for Paris before being thwarted by three US citizens had previously travelled to Syria and was known to French and Spanish intelligence, reports say.

The attack had prompted European security services to step up security as fears of attacks by jihadis returning from Syria fuelled fears.

The man behind the attack on Friday has since been identified as Ayoub el-Khazani, a 25-year-old Moroccan, known to Belgian, French and Spanish authorities, as a radical Islamist who travelled to fight in Syria last year, prompting the belief that the attack was linked to Islamic State.

French authorities were questioning Khazani at their counter-terrorism headquarters outside Paris as remarkable details continued to emerge of how the heavily armed gunman was overpowered by passengers on the train in France.

The office of Charles Michel, Belgium’s prime minister, also confirmed that Khazani was known to Belgian authorities and they had been informed by Spain that he was a security risk. It also emerged that the he may have lived in France before travelling to Syria.

A Briton, and two US soldiers, one of whom suffered knife wounds in the struggle to subdue the Kalashnikov-carrying attacker, were among those who wrestled him to the ground after he had boarded in Brussels.

Within hours of the thwarted attack, security measures on the high-speed Thalys trains between France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany were upgraded with increased patrols and baggage checks at international rail stations.

Security experts have repeated warned of a “blowback” and say that the threat post by European jihadis who have fought in Syria or Iraq returning home is significant. A spokesman for Europol, the EU’s police agency, said on Saturday that Europeans returning from Iraq and Syria presented the “most serious terrorist threat Europe has faced since 9/11”.

The five countries deemed to be at most risk of attack are Belgium, France, Germany, the UK, and the Netherlands.

As many as 5,000 Europeans have joined the fighting in Syria, posing a potentially significant risk to their native countries. This includes around 600 Britons, 1,200 French nationals and at least 350 Belgians, the latter giving the country the largest contingent of foreign fighters relative to the size of its Muslim population.

France remains on high alert after January’s terrorist attacks on the  satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and a kosher supermarket in Paris, in which gunmen killed 17 people. In May last year, four people, including two Israeli tourists, were killed when a French gunman opened fire at the Jewish museum in Brussels.