Security tightened after bomb scare

FRANCE is deploying hundreds of extra police at busy public places in its main cities after dynamite was planted in a Paris department store, Interior Minister Michele Alliot-Marie said yesterday.

Police found the explosives at the busy Printemps department store on Tuesday after a warning letter from a previously unknown group calling itself the Afghan Revolutionary Front and demanding the withdrawal of French troops from Afghanistan. Alliot-Marie said around 700 extra men would be deployed at department stores and other busy sites during the Christmas shopping period. “Over the past 10 days we already had an extra 1,500 men and we are adding five mobile police squadrons, of which two will be in Paris,” she said after meeting the heads of France’s security services, transport bodies and department stores.

“There will also be military personnel and we will reach a total of 2,200 men,” she said, adding that France’s security alert level would remain at “red,” its second-highest point after “scarlet”.

Defence Minister Herve Morin said earlier yesterday that, despite the reference to Afghanistan in the tip-off letter, Islamists were not the main suspects in the investigation.

“The phrasing, the dialectic used (in the letter) are not those typical of Islamist terrorists,” Morin said on RTL radio. “The word ‘revolutionary’ in the name of the group, the word ‘capitalist’ used to describe the store, the lack of any reference to Islam or jihad, all of these are reasons why Islamists are not considered the prime suspects.”