Masked French police have taken the man who admitted beheading a businessman to the suspect’s home to search it.

A detained truck driver with a history of radical Islamic ties is refusing to speak to police investigators over his implication in an explosion and beheading in south-eastern France.

An attacker with suspected ties to French Islamic radicals has rammed a car into a gas factory in France, and the severed head of a local businessman was hung from a post at the entrance, officials said.

The first man arrested over today’s attack in France was known to intelligence services for possible ties to Islamic extremists but had no arrest record, interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve has said.