Six arrested for alleged conspiracy to attack French leader Macron: a magistrate

French security agents on Tuesday arrested six people suspected of plotting to attack French President Emmanuel Macron, according to a French judicial official.

Prosecutors have opened a preliminary investigation into an alleged criminal terrorist badociation, said the judicial officer.

The official, who requested anonymity to discuss the allegations, said intelligence agents had arrested the six suspects in three scattered regions: one in the Alps, one in Brittany and four near the Belgian border in Moselle. .

The plan to target the French president seems vague and unfinished, but violent, said the official.

Authorities said the six were between 22 and 62 years old and included a woman.

Interior Minister Christophe Castaner told reporters that they were suspected of being far right activists. Authorities feared "concrete threats" from the group, Castaner said.

French presidents have been targeted several times over the decades. In 2002, a far-right sympathizer attempted to attack President Jacques Chirac on Avenue des Champs-Elysees in Paris during the celebrations on 14 July.

Macron was Tuesday in the city of Verdun, in northeastern France, as part of commemorations of the centenary of the end of the First World War.

The alleged conspiracy was discovered just days before US President Donald Trump and dozens of other world leaders were to travel to France for the weekend celebrations marking the signing, 100 years ago, of the United States. November 11 armistice ending the First World War.