Five men were arrested this week in France after investigators found they were planning a terror attack in the country, Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said Friday.

According to the Associated Press, the men, two of whom were French citizens, were arrested in two French cities: Strasbourg and Marseille.

The attack was planned to be executed as early as Dec. 1, and the men were receiving orders from an Islamic State group member based in Iraq or Syria, Molins said.

Investigators found weapons during home searches and recovered plans to obtain ammunition, instructions for a money handover and a notebook with details of death in martyrdom.

Molins said the men hadn't chosen a specific target, but they had "common instructions to obtain weapons (and) instructions given by a person from the Iraqi-Syrian zone through encrypted applications popular among terrorists" and a "clear will to find and to identify targets to commit an act in the very short term." 

France remains under a state of emergency that was imposed after Islamic State attacks in Paris in November 2015 that killed 130 people.

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Members of the conversion crew take a break as the main scoreboard is lowered to the floor to be worked on as the arena gets ready for the next concert at State Farm Arena, Thursday, October 2, 2025, in Atlanta. The crew was working on creating a stage for the Friday, Oct. 3 Maxwell concert. (Jason Getz/AJC)

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