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Mysterious group plants dynamite in Paris department store (2nd Lead)

Dec 16, 2008, 11:13 GMT

Paris - French police have found five sticks of dynamite that had been planted in a large department store in central Paris, the online edition of the daily Le Figaro reported Tuesday, citing the Interior Ministry. However, the ministry said that the dynamite sticks were not connected and lacked fuses, and could therefore not have exploded. Police were sent to the Printemps store on the posh Boulevard Haussmann after a letter from a group calling itself the Afghan Revolutionary Front saying that bombs had been planted in one of the shop's buildings was sent to a French news agency. The entire department store, which was bustling with Christmas shoppers, was evacuated as police carried out their search. They eventually found the dynamite in a men's room on the third floor of the store's Men's Department. In the letter, the Afghan Revolutionary Front demanded that French President Nicolas Sarkozy 'withdraw his troops from our country Afghanistan before the end of February 2009 or we will take action again in your big capitalist stores and this time without alerting you.' France currently has about 3,000 soldiers deployed in Afghanistan to fight the Taliban rebels. In Strasbourg, Sarkozy confirmed to journalists that the explosives lacked a detonating system and said that police were in the process of analyzing the explosives and the letter. 'Vigilance in the face of terrorism is the only possible line to take,' he said.

Europe News

Mysterious group plants dynamite in Paris department store (2nd Lead)

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