Police found a bundle of dynamite in a major Paris department store on Tuesday after Agence France-Presse (AFP) received a letter from an unknown group threatening attacks unless France pulls its troops out of Afghanistan.
Police cordoned off Printemps Haussmann store and the French capital’s best known shopping boulevard while hordes of shoppers and tourists were evacuated at the height of the Christmas shopping season.
A group calling itself the Afghan Revolutionary Front had earlier sent a letter to AFP warning of ”several bombs” in the upscale store and demanding that France withdraw its 2 600 troops by the end of February.
Police used sniffer dogs to locate five sticks of dynamite in a third-floor toilet cistern in the Printemps menswear building, one of a group of famous shops on the renowned and tourist-dense Boulevard Haussmann.
Interior Minister Michele Alliot-Marie said no detonator was found, meaning that the device could not explode, and a police official described the find as old sticks of dynamite fastened together with a piece of cord.
Briefing reporters at the scene, Alliot-Marie said: ”From what we know so far, this was not a device that was intended to explode.”
The letter, which AFP handed to police, linked the warning to the French deployment in Afghanistan, where Nato and US forces are battling Taliban insurgents alongside government forces.
”Send the message to your president that he must withdraw his troops from our country before the end of February 2009 or else we will take action in your capitalist department stores and this time, without warning,” it said.
Alliot-Marie cautioned that investigators would be wary of the claims contained in the letter, which ”could point them toward false leads”.
Asked about the discovery, President Nicolas Sarkozy — in Strasbourg to address the European Parliament — called for vigilance and firmness in the battle against terrorism.
”Vigilance against terrorism is the only possible policy; vigilance because unfortunately anything can happen, and firmness because you cannot compromise with terrorism,” he told reporters.
But Sarkozy also stressed the need to be ”extremely prudent” and not jump to conclusions.
Alliot-Marie said the Afghan Revolutionary Front was not known to French intelligence and stressed that ”the end of the year was a particularly symbolic time” for would-be attackers of any ilk.
The postmark showed that the threatening letter was sent on Monday in north-eastern Paris and arrived at AFP before 9am on Tuesday.
Shopper Marie-Christine Soulard said she was told that a suspect package had been found in the store after she brought in a Georgio Armani dress for alterations and that she had to leave immediately.
”There was no panic. It all took place calmly. But I don’t know when I will be able to get my dress back,” she said.
Lightly-dressed store clerks and sales personnel were rushed out of the multi-storey store and left standing in the biting December cold.
”Customers were told to leave first and we followed quickly behind,” said employee Nadine Mallet. ”I have to say I was frightened. I still have an upset stomach.”
Staff and shoppers said the evacuation was largely carried out calmly, but one witness said there was brief panic in Printemps’ menswear section where some clients attempted to run down ascending escalators.
”We make 50% of our turnover in December, it’s obviously going to hurt business,” complained sales clerk Gregory Despleuchin.
The store reopened shortly after 2.30pm (1.30pm GMT), police said.
Last week, an AFP journalist received a warning from an anonymous caller that a bomb would be set off at the Printemps department store, prompting police to order an evacuation for what then proved a false alarm.
In November, an Afghan Taliban leader had warned in a video broadcast on an Arab satellite news network of attacks to be carried out in Paris unless France withdrew its soldiers.
The last major terrorist attacks on French soil were in 1995 and 1996, when eight people were killed and some 200 injured in a wave of strikes on the Paris metro and tourist sites by Algerian Islamists.
Boulevard Haussmann was also targeted in 1985 and 1986 during a spate of attacks on Paris department stores, many of them claimed by Lebanese Hezbollah militants, which left 13 dead and 303 injured.
Printemps Haussmann and its next-door rival Galeries Lafayette were rocked by successive bomb attacks on December 7 1985 that injured 43 people.
Sarkozy decided earlier this year to add hundreds of troops to the French contingent serving in a Nato force that is battling the Taliban in Afghanistan and supporting President Hamid Karzai.
France’s contribution is one of the largest in Afghanistan, after those of the United States, Britain, Canada, and Germany. – AFP
