French paper Le Monde reports that the plant may have been chosen as a target due to the fact it contains a large amount of harmful gases and potentially explosive materials.Eyewitness Thierry Gricourt, who works near the factory, told French TV what he saw:"We can confirm that an incident occurred at our facility in L'Isle-d'Abeau, France this morning.
"Our priority at this stage is to take care of our employees, who have been evacuated from the site and all accounted for.
"Emergency services are on site and have contained the situation. The site is secure. Our crisis and emergency response teams have been activated and are working closely with all relevant authorities.
"Further information will be released as soon as it becomes available."
French President Francois Hollande, who was attending a summit in Brussels, attended a press conference giving what details he knew of the attack. He condemned it as a "pure terrorist attack," and said "there is no doubt the intention was to provoke an attack, an explosion."AFP reports that French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said the attack was an act of "Islamist terrorism" that "shows the jihadist threat remains very high."In Tunisia, at least 27 people have been killed on a beach by two gunmen. There are no details as yet about the nationalities of the victims, but during the holy month of Ramadan those sunbathing tend to be tourists. That would make this the second major attack on tourists in Tunisia this year, following an attack three months ago on the Bardo Museum in Tunis, which killed 21 people, also mainly tourists. Read more on VICE News.This story will be updated periodically."We heard a fairly loud noise shortly before 10 o'clock. We didn't get too concerned as we're not far from the airport Saint Exupery, so we thought it was an airplane passing by lower than usual.
"And then several minutes later we saw a very large deployment of security forces—the police and fire engines, with lots of trucks deployed around our road. We can see that several roads are blocked with police officers at the corner of every road."