French Police hold 4 family members of Champs-Elysees assailant: Source

Paris: The French Police have taken into custody four members of the family of a radicalised Islamist who was killed when he rammed a car loaded with guns and a gas bottle into a police van on the Champs-Elysees, a judicial source said Tuesday.

The ex-wife, brother and sister-in-law of Adam Dzaziri were detained late on Monday afternoon after police questioned them at the family home outside Paris.

The assailant`s father was also "taken into custody during the evening", the source said.

Dzaziri was killed in Monday`s attack, but there were no other casualties.

Sources close to the probe said he had been on France`s security watchlist since 2015 over ties to "the radical Islamist movement".

The suspect`s father told AFP that his son "had a registered weapon, he practised shooting". A source close to the case said the 31-year-old had a firearms permit.

There has been no claim of responsibility for the assault, which occurred just a short distance from where a jihadist shot dead a police officer two months earlier.

France remains under a state of emergency imposed after the November 2015 attacks in Paris, when Islamic State jihadists slaughtered 130 people in a night of carnage at venues across the city.

The latest attack came two days before the French government is to unveil a new anti-terrorism law, designed to allow the state of emergency to be lifted.