French PM warns of more attacks after Islamist terror killing

Manuel Valls said the question is not if there will be another attack, but when

France's Prime Minister Manuel Valls warned today that the country could face more attacks after a grisly killing in which a suspected Islamist pinned the severed head of his boss to the gates of a gas factory.

The alleged assailant, identified as 35-year-old married father-of-three Yassin Salhi, also caused an explosion by smashing his vehicle into the Air Products factory near France's second city of Lyon.

The grisly killing came on the same day as two other attacks claimed by the Islamic State jihadist group, which left 38 people dead at a beach resort in Tunisia and 27 in a suicide bombing in Kuwait.

The victim, a 54-year-old local businessman, was found with Arabic inscriptions scrawled on him and Islamic flags were also found on the site at the small town of Saint-Quentin-Fallavier, some 40 kilometres (25 miles) from Lyon.

His head was "hung onto the fence surrounded by two Islamic flags bearing the Shahada, the profession of (the Muslim) faith," said French prosecutor Francois Molins.

Valls said yesterday's attack would create tension in France -- home to Western Europe's largest Muslim population -- that "will be exploited".

"It's difficult for a society to live for years under the threat of attack," he told AFP on a flight back from Bogota, adding: "The question is not... If there will be another attack, but when."

This is the first time someone in France has been found beheaded by a suspected Islamist, a method of killing that has become a trademark of the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria.

It also came nearly six months after the Islamist attacks in and around Paris that left 17 people dead, starting with a shooting at satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.

Speaking in Brussels after cutting short an EU summit, French President Francois Hollande labelled the factory beheading "a terrorist attack," adding that "the intent was without doubt to cause an explosion".