Paris: Two Frenchmen arrested in Marseille on Tuesday planned to carry out an "imminent and violent attack" ahead of the first round of the presidential election on Sunday, France's interior minister said.
French interior minister Matthias Fekl said the "radicalised" suspects were preparing to strike Marseille "in the next few days".
France votes Sunday in the first round of its two-stage election, with security ramped up for the ballot after a series of attacks in recent years that have made security one of the major issues of the campaign.
Molins later told a press conference the two men were planning a "violent" and "imminent" attack on French territory, adding it was not however possible to determine with precision the date or the target.
A "massive quantity of explosives" and many weapons were seized after homes were searched in connection with the arrests.
Conservative candidate Francois Fillon was also warned about the danger last week, an aide said.
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Critics blamed her for the demise, but Ivey's defenders said she had no control over Wall Street and tuition costs. Bentley in November loaned his campaign $50,000 to pay mounting legal bills in the face of various investigations.
With Le Pen expected to reach the second round, polls continue to indicate that whoever faces her will win, although after Brexit and Donald Trump's U.S. presidential election victory, no one is taking anything for granted.
A definite attack had been headed off, he said. The pair is believed to have met in 2015 while they were both in prison.
With the country still under a state of emergency, Fekl said more than 50,000 police, gendarmes and soldiers would be deployed for each leg of the election.
Candidates on the right have been especially vocal, seeking to appeal to voters traumatized by Islamic State group-inspired attacks that have killed at least 235 people in France since January 2015, by far the largest casualty figure of any Western country.
Jean-Luc Melenchon, the French presidential candidate for the far-left, greets people on the Canal Saint-Martin in Paris during his election campaign, April 17, 2017.
President Francois Hollande praised the work of the security forces, saying they had "done a remarkable job enabling us to arrest two people who will be brought before judges and police so that we can find out exactly what they were planning".
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