http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/09/world/europe/paris-notre-dame-gas-canisters.html 2016-09-09 00:09:06 Mystery Surrounds Car With Gas Containers Found in Paris Near Notre Dame The car did not contain detonators, but the police have arrested four people — all suspected of being Islamist extremists — in connection with the case. === PARIS — It was an ominous discovery, especially for a city so recently scarred by large-scale terrorism: a car full of gas cylinders, parked in the heart of Paris near the Notre Dame Cathedral. It was a puzzling discovery, too. Four days after the car was spotted early on Sunday, the mystery surrounding it still swirls with unanswered questions. The biggest one: Was it connected to a terror plot? Some suggestive clues have emerged. The car was parked illegally in the middle of a small street with no license plates, and a notebook with Arabic writing was found inside, according to the mayor of the district where the car was found, the Fifth Arrondissement. The police said they were seeking at least one of the daughters of the car’s owner. She is thought to be a supporter of Islamist militancy, according to Agence France-Presse. But the car was not rigged as a bomb. The police found no detonator with the six gas cylinders. The police had four other people — two brothers and their girlfriends — in custody in connection with the case on Thursday, Agence France-Presse said, but nothing was publicly known about how they might be linked to the car. All four are from the Loiret area of central France, the news agency reported; one couple was arrested Tuesday at a highway service area in southern France, and the other late Wednesday or early Thursday near the town of Montargis in Loiret. The news agency said that the French intelligence services had flagged the couple arrested in Southern France as belonging to the “radical Islamist movement.” In a speech on Thursday, President The Paris prosecutor’s office, which handles terrorism investigations, did not respond to multiple requests for comment on the case. France is still under a state of emergency because of the terrorist threat, which Bernard Cazeneuve, the French interior minister, called “extremely high” on Wednesday. Fears of an attack on large crowds in cities or at big events have risen in France after the deadly episode in July in Nice, along France’s Mediterranean Sea coastline, where In a letter to the Paris police prefect, the mayor of the Fifth Arrondissement, Florence Berthout, has called for an increase in police and military personnel to protect the thousands of students and tourists in the Latin Quarter that is part of the Fifth Arrondissement. The discovery of the car so close to the Seine and to popular tourist sites The security forces in France have arrested more than 260 people this year “who were preparing, for a significant number of them, attacks or acts that could potentially cause tragedies,” Mr. Cazeneuve said on Wednesday. French officials have expressed worries that militants sent by the Islamic State or inspired by its propaganda would change the tactics they use on French soil. Patrick Calvar, the head of the France’s domestic intelligence agency, said in May that he believed future Islamic State attacks would be carried out not with gunmen and suicide vests, but with car bombings and other explosive devices, as terrorist groups did in the “As soon as they are able to bring explosives specialists onto our territory, they will be able to avoid sacrificing their fighters while also causing maximum damage,” Mr. Calvar told Separately,