PARIS — French police found dynamite in a Paris department store Tuesday, a bomb scare during the holiday shopping season that was accompanied by an unknown group’s demand for the withdrawal of French troops from Afghanistan.
The five relatively old sticks of dynamite planted in the men’s store of the elegant Printemps department chain were not attached to a detonator and did not pose a risk of explosion, authorities said.
After evacuating the jam-packed store in the heart of the downtown shopping district just before noon, police used bomb-sniffing dogs to find the explosives, which a warning letter sent to a French news agency had said were in a third-floor bathroom.
The letter was signed by the “Afghan Revolutionary Front,” a group that is “totally unknown” to French intelligence services, Interior Minister Michele Alliot-Marie told legislators in comments in the National Assembly.
Despite the rhetoric about Afghanistan, the type of explosives, the language of the communique and other details were not consistent with previous activity by Islamic extremist groups, anti-terrorism officials said.
“We must be wary of the indications in the letter that could orient investigators toward false leads,” Alliot-Marie said at the scene, where hundreds of police officers oversaw an orderly evacuation of the store. She announced that security would be stepped up in Paris and other cities during the holidays.
The incident came during a heightened terrorist alert in Europe. On Friday, French police arrested two suspects linked to a group in neighboring Belgium that allegedly sent militants to train and fight in Afghanistan. Belgian police rounded up an additional 14 suspects because of fears that a suspect recently returned from Afghanistan was preparing a suicide attack.
Last month, a Taliban chief issued a video threatening an attack in Paris if France did not withdraw its approximately 3,000 troops from Afghanistan.
