Europe remains on high terror alert

French police have released three of the 12 suspects arrested in an anti-terror sweep following the attacks in Paris by Islamic extremists that killed 17 people and put Europe on high alert.

Paris prosecutor spokesman Denis Fauriat said nine other suspects detained on Friday will have questioning prolonged by 48 hours, a step allowed under France’s tough anti-terrorism laws.

Police in France, Germany and Belgium have arrested dozens of suspects in recent days as part of the anti-terror sweep sparked by the bloody spree in and around Paris, in which brothers Said and Cherif Kouachi and their friend Amedy Coulibaly killed 17 at satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo, a kosher grocery and elsewhere.

Fallout from the attacks has spread around the world.

Members of the first known Islamic State cell operating inside Israel has been arrested, the country’s Shin Bet security service said last night.

The intelligence agency said the seven cell members belong to the country’s Arab minority.

It said they were caught just before executing an attack and were practising on animals how to behead people.

Europe was on high alert last night as the suspected mastermind of a jihadist cell in Belgium remained at large and jittery authorities blocked anti-Islamist rallies in Germany and France.

With tensions heightened, the second gunman in the Charlie Hebdo magazine attack was buried discreetly in an unmarked grave near Paris late Saturday in the hope that it would not become a pilgrimage site for radical Islamists.

Meanwhile, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, considered the brains behind the cell plotting to kill Belgian police, was still on the run days after the group was dismantled by intelligence services.

DNA tests showed the 27-year-old was not among suspects arrested in Athens and is still at large, Belgium’s Justice Minister Koen Geens told VRT television.

In Germany, police banned a rally by the anti-Islamic Pegida movement and other open-air gatherings planned for today in the eastern city of Dresden, saying there was a “concrete threat” of an attack against its leadership.

The group claimed the threat came from the Islamic State group based in Syria and Iraq, with local media reporting that Pegida’s most prominent leader Lutz Bachmann was the target.

In the wake of the French attacks and the Belgian anti-terror raids, EU foreign ministers were to meet in Brussels today to discuss ways to boost co-operation to combat the threat posed by radicalised Europeans returning home after fighting in Iraq and Syria.

The meeting comes as the bloc prepares for a special leaders’ summit on February 12 on fighting terrorism.