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Security has been tightened in Paris and other French cities after a previously unknown group claimed responsibility for a bomb threat in a branch of the men's department store Printemps in the heart of Paris's shopping district.
The group, calling itself the Afghan Revolutionary Front, was previously unknown to security services. In a statement given to Agence France Presse the group claimed the bomb was a message to President Nicolas Sarkozy to pull French troops out of Afghanistan by the end of February.
However, reports suggest the Afghan link may be a false lead. A senior government official said France was more concerned by the threat of terrorists attacks linked to Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb than any Afghan backlash.
The explosives discovered in the latest incident did not pose a serious threat because the bomb consisted of old sticks of dynamite with no detonator. Despite this, Michèle Alliot-Marie, the French interior minister, said extra police would be deployed in major cities.
The store on Boulevard Haussman had to be evacuated during one of the busiest periods of the year when it would expect to receive around100,000 visitors. The store's three Paris branches were also evacuated last week following another bomb threat.
There have been several attacks on shops in Paris in the past 20 years, with a series of bombings in 1986 attributed to terrorist groups connected to the Middle East, and an attack in 1974 when an explosion, attributed to Carlos the Jackal, killed two people and injured 34.
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