Corsican separatists planted a car stuffed with explosives in central Paris Thursday in what they said was a demonstration of their capacity to strike "where and whenever we choose."
Anti-terrorist police sealed off part of the district in the southwest of the capital after journalists at two newspapers received telephone tip-offs from the pro-independence group Armata Corsa.
Inside the Renault Clio were several rubbish bags containing unidentified chemicals, nails and screws, six small gas cylinders as well as an unattached but functioning detonating device, police said.
Armata Corsa is a small dissident separatist group which in January threatened to unleash "blind and bloody attacks" in Paris and Strasbourg unless the killers of one of its leaders Jean-Michel Rossi were brought to justice.
Rossi and his bodyguard Jean-Claude Fratacci were gunned down on the Mediterranean island last August in what police believe was a settling of accounts between nationalist factions.
According to Le Monde newspaper, an anonymous caller said that the group had decided not to set off the Paris car-bomb, "which would have been murderous," because of "recent signs of good will on the part of the ruling Socialist party.
This was presumed to be an allusion to the arrests on Tuesday of nine nationalists suspected of having taken part in an attack on a police barracks on the island in December, six of whom are still in custody.
Armata Corsa has already said in a statement that some of those detained were linked to the murders of Rossi and Fratacci.
But the caller told Le Monde that "we have shown yet again that we can strike where and whenever we choose. Naturally, if any of our militants are harassed, we could re-launch our actions." – PARIS (AFP)
