Women fail to blow up Notre Dame Cathedral

The New York Post reports,

PARIS — A failed attack involving a car loaded with gas canisters near Notre Dame Cathedral was spearheaded by a group of women that included a 19-year-old whose written pledge of allegiance to the Islamic State group was found by police, a security official said Friday.

“It’s at the same time rare and predictable,” Matthieu Suc, author of “Wives of Jihadis,” told France Info radio.

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Police patrol Notre Dame Cathedral.Photo: AP
Women in the group do not take part in attacks, he said, but are there “to ensure the longevity of the caliphate” by having babies and providing moral support. But, he added, “there are often young girls, who are just as radicalized as the young men, and they also want the status of martyr, and they want to act.”

More than one-third of the nearly 700 French citizens who have reached the war zones of Iraq and Syria are women, according to government figures. And officials have said for months that those being recruited by Islamic State in France are increasingly adolescent girls and young women.