On Tuesday night, several French prisons were attacked: unknown persons set fire to cars parked in the prison parking lots and one prison was attacked with automatic weapons.

According to Le Parisien, a total of seven prisons were attacked: five in the south of the country (in Toulon, Aix-en-Provence, Marseille, Valence and Nîmes) and two near Paris (in Villepinte and Nanterre).

The national authorities have qualified the attacks as terrorist, so the National Anti-Terrorist Prosecutor's Office is in charge of their investigation.

AFP sources familiar with the investigation believe that the attacks were “obviously linked” to the authorities' efforts to combat drug trafficking.