Article

2008-12-16 Europe

PARIS -- French police found a package of explosives at the Printemps department store complex in central Paris on Tuesday, a spokeswoman at Paris police headquarters said.

The spokeswoman, Mélanie Leprettre, said a warning about the explosives had been sent Tuesday morning to the French news agency Agence France-Presse, which alerted the police.

A previously unknown group demanding the withdrawal of French troops from Afghanistan claimed to have planted the explosive devices. Officials said that five sticks of dynamite had been found.

An editor at AFP, André Birukoff, said the news agency had received an earlier warning that an attack on Printemps was imminent. He said that one of AFP's journalists had received an anonymous telephone call on the morning of Dec. 10 warning that there would soon be an explosion at the department store. The caller broke off before identifying himself or giving any other information.

Employees said that the store had been on high alert for several days.

The discovery of the explosives at the height of the Christmas shopping season threw the area into confusion, with traffic backed up as the police cordoned off streets around Printemps. The store, on the elegant Boulevard Haussmann in the heart of one of the French capital's main shopping districts, is packed with shoppers and tourists at this time of year.

President Nicolas Sarkozy, speaking from the eastern French city of Strasbourg, said in a live television statement that the devices had no detonators attached. He said that the French police were analyzing the devices, and he called for calm and vigilance.

Security agents at the scene said the explosives had been discovered in a rest room on the third floor of the Printemps men's store, one of three Printemps buildings in the complex. All three stores were evacuated.

In its statement to AFP, a group calling itself the Afghan Revolutionary Front said that it had planted several bombs in the Printemps men's store that would go off if not removed by Wednesday. The statement called for the withdrawal of French troops from Afghanistan. It added: "Send the message to your president that he needs to withdraw his troops from our country (Afghanistan) before the end of February 2009, or else we will act again in your capitalist department stores, and this time with no warning."

France has about 3,000 troops deployed with the NATO-led force in Afghanistan.

French news reports said that the French intelligence services had no previous knowledge of the group.

Guards at the entrance to Printemps said they had received the order to evacuate the store at 11:20 a.m. and that the evacuation had taken about 15 minutes. They declined to say how many people had been evacuated.

A spokeswoman at Galeries Lafayette, the other large department store complex on Boulevard Haussmann, said that the Paris flagship store was visited by about 200,000 shoppers a day during the Christmas season.

Within about an hour of the evacuation, Interior Minister Michele Alliot-Marie and Mayor Bertrand Delanoë were both at the scene, where the normally packed boulevard was empty of vehicles other than bomb squad vans that had been sent in, looking eerily out of place against the backdrop of colorful Christmas lights.

"For the moment, we have found sticks of dynamite in just one location," Ms. Alliot-Marie told reporters. She said that the kind of dynamite found was "relatively old."

Outside Printemps, there was not panic but frustration among shoppers and tourists huddled outside and impatient to resume their shopping.

"Well, I'll just have to come back later, then," said Eleanor Deshayes, 29, when informed that the department store had been evacuated due to a bomb alert.

By 1 p.m. the police were removing barriers and traffic began flowing again. Printemps saleswomen, who had been shivering in near-freezing temperatures after evacuating the store in their shirtsleeves, prepared to return to their sales counters. Shortly after 2 p.m., two of the Printemps stores reopened but the men's unit remained closed.

Public concern about the French military presence in Afghanistan has been growing since the deaths of 10 soldiers there in a Taliban ambush in August.

The ambush, in which 21 others were wounded, was the bloodiest against French forces since a 1983 attack in Beirut killed 58 soldiers.

Mr. Sarkozy has strongly defended France's role in Afghanistan alongside its Western allies as part of the fight against terrorism and for the rights of Afghan women.

But his promise in April to commit additional French troops, which brought the commitment to nearly 3,000, was not popular.

Posted by john frum 2008-12-16 09:59|| || Front Page|| [10 views ] Top
File under: al-Qaeda in Europe

#1 "For the moment, we have found sticks of dynamite in just one location," Ms. Alliot-Marie told reporters. She said that the kind of dynamite found was "relatively old."

That, and the fact that they called AFP immediately to ensure that they got on the news, points to leftists instead of Islamists.

Posted by gromky 2008-12-16 10:40|| 2008-12-16 10:40|| Front Page Top

#2 That bomb was not meant to explode as no detonator has been found (Le Figaro).

Posted by Injun Angulet2150 2008-12-16 11:46|| 2008-12-16 11:46|| Front Page Top

#3 Case of Chiroc vodka?

Posted by swksvolFF 2008-12-16 11:51|| 2008-12-16 11:51|| Front Page Top

#4 solution: add department stores to France's ethnically sensitive NO-GO shariah zones.

Reminder: Bush-the-genius challenged France on the restrictions of veiling in public facilities.

Posted by Jitch Protector of the Nebraskans3505 2008-12-16 14:50|| 2008-12-16 14:50|| Front Page Top

#5 A few observations:

1) There were some errors in the French used in the letter. Not ordinary orthographic errors (French orthography is very trivky) but the kind no
person grown in France would ever make except if on
purpose. For instance they say one toilet (and in the masculine) when in French it is either feminine (when you wash yourself) or automatically plural (when you refer to that room the English call "the gents" or "the ladies"

2) They warned, that is unusual for sialmic terrorits

3) There were bombs in women's toilets and the letter tells about need to unmount the flush. So, either it was a woman with tools and time
in her hands or, it was cleaning personel

4) The letter ends with "Long life to Free Afghanistan". That is, not cursing against infidels, nothing about the Umma. And while Islamists use to seethe about infidels occuppying "Muslim" land, they never talk of nations (Afghanistan) or of freedom

My diagnostic: rich white kids playing revolution and, like Jand Fonda and similar scum, ready to help whatever genocidal scum in order too sjake their boredom.

Posted by JFM">JFM 2008-12-16 15:35|| 2008-12-16 15:35|| Front Page Top

#6 The letter doesn't have blatant orthotographic errors but the syntaxic ones are huge. Given that French orthography is far harder than syntax I believe the authors grew in France and are trying to pass for Afghans.

Posted by JFM">JFM 2008-12-16 17:10|| 2008-12-16 17:10|| Front Page Top

#7 JMF kiddies in Paris wanting to play the Athens game?
Well, thought out BTW.

Posted by .5MT 2008-12-16 17:53|| www.cybernations.net]">[www.cybernations.net] 2008-12-16 17:53|| Front Page Top

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