Five people were arrested today in eastern France and were detained as part of an investigation by the country’s intelligence services for forming a terrorist criminal organization, the anti-terrorist prosecutor’s office said.

A source close to the investigation confirmed that the five have been taken into custody, without specifying what charges they face.

Always according to this source, the arrests were made on Friday morning in his district Mert-et-Moselle, in Nancy and the nearby communes of Vandevere-le-Nancy and Toul.

Earlier, the Minister of the Interior Gerald Darmanen had called on local authorities to be vigilant ahead of the Christmas and Epiphany holidays, due to “the very high risk of a terrorist threat”. French authorities have been on alert for a possible terrorist threat since October, after Dominique Bernard, a French language teacher at Arras high school, was killed by a radicalized former student. This activation of the alarm is also due to the international context, due to the war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip.