A new terrorist attack was prevented during a special operation in Strasbourg and Marseille, French Minister of the Interior Bernard Cazeneuve said on Monday.

Overall, seven people were detained in the two cities, RFI reports. 

The detainees – aged 29-30 – are citizens of France, Morocco and Afghanistan. Six of them were unknown to the French intelligence services. Information on the Morocco citizen, who doesn’t live in France, was received from the intelligence of the “partner-state.” The special operation was carried out in the framework of the investigation of the case which was launched by the anti-terrorist department of the Prosecutor’s Office eight months ago.

According to Cazeneuve, they managed to prevent a terrorist attack, which had been panned to be carried out in the territory of France long ago.   The investigation should establish whether the detainees planned to carry out several attacks simultaneously.

The Minister also noted that the first stage of the detentions on the sidelines of this case took place on June 14 - several days after the beginning of Euro 2016. Two of these five detainees were arrested.

Since the beginning of the year, overall 418 people have been detained in France on suspicion of having links with terrorist organizations.