PARIS - FOUR members of the Jewish Defence League, an extremist militant group, were detained on Wednesday over an attack on a Paris bookstore run by pro-Palestinian activists, judicial officials said.

Aged between 16 and 26, the youths were arrested in Paris and its suburbs and taken into custody on suspicion of trashing the store.

Masked vandals burst into the shop, armed with sticks and bottles of oil early on Friday afternoon, smashing the computers and cash till, pulling books off the shelves and emptying bottles of oil on the floor.

Known for its support for the Palestinian cause, the bookstore in the north-western 17th district of Paris has been attacked several times before.

Following the incident, the MRAP anti-racism group repeated a call for a French ban on the Jewish Defence League (JDL), which was set up by a radical US rabbi in 1968 to protect Jews from anti-Semitism.

France is home to Europe's largest Muslim community, estimated at five million, and its largest Jewish population with some 600,000 people. -- AFP