2,500 police on patrol in Paris
Reinforced security in the capital after explosives discovered in shopping centre.
POLICE patrols in Paris have been reinforced with an extra 500 officers following the discovery of explosives in a shopping centre.
A total of 2,500 officers will be guarding public places over the Christmas period.
The extra officers were drafted in after explosives were found in the toilets of the Printemps shopping centre.
Five sticks of dynamite were discovered after a group calling itself the Afghan Revolutionary Front sent a letter to the newswire AFP to tell them they had left them in the building.
The shop was evacuated during the search.
The letter demanded the withdrawal of French troops from Afghanistan before February 2009 or further attacks would be carried out on major shops without warning.
Police are currently investigating CCTV footage and analysing the explosives.
A police source said they were investigating all possibilities including left-wing and right-wing extremists.
In an interview with RTL, Defence Minister Hervé Morin said that Islamic extremist were not the first line of inquiry as the wording in the letter “was not that of Islamic terror movements.
“The word revolutionary figures in the name of the group, the word capitalist was used to describe the shops, there is an absence of references to Islam, to waging jihad,” he said.
Photo:Jonas Roux
