Several terror plots targeting 'sporting events, stadiums and schools' foiled in Nice since Bastille Day attacks

The cases have been handed to specialist counter-terrorism judges in Paris, prosecutor says

Several terror plots have been foiled in the Nice area since the July attack, which killed 84 people and injured 202 others

Several serious terror attacks have been thwarted by counter-terrorism forces in Nice since the the deadly attack on Bastille Day, the city's prosecutor has said.

Jean-Michel Pretre disclosed that as many as five serious plots targeting sporting events, schools or places of worship across the city had been foiled in the past three months.

Mr Pretre disclosed the terror plots during an interview for a documentary titled “Deradicalisation", which will be screened on French national television tonight (28 September).

The prosecutor says during the interview: “Several cases were handed over to the specialist counter-terrorist judges in Paris.

"They involved plots to attack places of worship or certain gatherings, sporting events, stadiums, schools, which are recurrent themes on the communication published on the internet."

Mr Pretre adds that the cases were individuals apparently ready to act who had “began to articulate quite specific things about a specific target".

Earlier in the week the Mr Prêtre told a court in Nice that some “70 cases related to terrorism or violent radicalisation” had been investigated by prosecutors since the attack on the city's coastline in July.

The Bastille Day attack occurred when Tunisian Isis supporter Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel drove a lorry into crowds of people on 14 July. It is considered one of the deadliest terrorist atrocities in Europe, killing 84 people, including ten children, and injuring 202 others, 52 of them critically.

Last week French police arrested eight more suspects in connection with the terror incident, who are said to have had links to Bouhlel.

Authorities on the Riviera have been on high alert since the attack took place, cancelling several events in the region including a popular Marseille air show in August.

France has heavily increased its counter-terrorism forces after a string of attacks in the past two years, the most serious of which was in Paris last November and the mass killing by gunmen of Charlie Hebdo staff in January 2015.