At least 12 al Qaeda suspects arrested around Europe in a plot to attack targets in France.

Three of the men allegedly linked to man caught with bomb-making kit in Naples; arrests come as US, France, other European nations have stepped up terrorism alert vigilance.

French authorities arrested twelve men on Tuesday morning on suspicion of involvement with al-Qaida and terror plots, news agencies reported.

AFP reported a police source as saying the men were detained in the southern French cities of Marseille and Bordeaux. According to an official, police seized “some weapons, including a Kalashnikov and a pump-action shotgun, as well as ammunition.”

Also on Tuesday, French police arrested three men said to be linked to a man of Algerian origin taken into custody by Italian police in Naples on Saturday, who is due to be extradited to France. Police reportedly found the phone numbers for the three men in the mobile phone of the Algerian man.

The man, 28, had been under a European arrest warrant when he was caught, allegedly with a bomb-making kit.