New group?
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French police say unknown group threatens to plant bombs on rail network
PARIS, Mar 03, 2004 (AFX-Europe via COMTEX) --
A previously unknown group calling itself AZF has threatened to set off 10 bombs on the French rail network unless it is given more than 4 mln eur police sources said.
They said the group has sent letters to President Jacques Chirac and Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, in which it warns that bombs have already been set in place and primed to explode on different dates.
The letters demanded four million dollars and one million euros, police said.
Speaking earlier on LCI radio, the director of the national police force, Michel Gaudin, said the police take the threat from AZF seriously, given that an explosive device was found on Feb 21 on a railway track near Limoges in central France.
Police said the device, left on the line from Paris to the southern city of Toulouse, was "of the standard of a fireworks manufacturer or of a very talented student but, whether deliberately or accidentally, it could not have gone off." It comprised a chemical explosive and a complicated detonator, they said.
An explosion at the AZF chemical factory in Toulouse on Sept 21, 2001, left 30 people dead and more than 2,000 injured.
An investigation into the causes of that blast is still going on, but preliminary indications suggest it was an accident.
Gaudin said police had only "a very, very brief telephone contact" with the group, but he does not believe they are connected with any known Islamic or Chechen terrorist movement.
http://www.individual.com/story.php?story=11647739
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