French police arrested four people on Monday suspected of having helped recruit volunteers for radical Islamist networks in Syria, Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said, reports Reuters.
European governments increasingly worry that citizens, often from a Muslim immigrant background, going to fight in Syria's civil war will import Islamist militancy upon their return.
Monday's arrests came a day after prosecutors said a 29-year-old Frenchman thought to have returned recently from fighting with Islamist insurgents in Syria had been arrested over the May 24 killing of three people at Brussels’ Jewish Museum.
However, there was no suggestion of a direct link between the arrest of Mehdi Nemmouche after a random check in the southern city of Marseille on Friday and the four new ones.
"There have been four arrests this morning," Cazeneuve told French radio Europe 1, referring to the police action in the Paris region and the south of France. "We are acting everywhere. There will be no respite in the fight against terrorists."
Nemmouche was detained in Marseille after he was found to be carrying a Kalashnikov rifle, another gun and ammunition similar to those used in the museum shooting that left an Israeli couple and a French woman dead, French and Belgian prosecutors said.
Read more of this report from Reuters.