France foils bomb attack outside US bank in Paris
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Police and private security vehicles outside the Bank of America building in the 8th arrondissement of Paris on March 28 following an apparent bomb attack attempt.
PHOTO: REUTERS
- French police arrested a suspect in Paris attempting to bomb a Bank of America with a homemade device containing fuel and explosive powder.
- The suspect claimed to be a Senegalese minor recruited via Snapchat for €600, with an accomplice filming the incident.
- The incident is under investigation for terrorist links amid heightened alerts in Europe due to the Middle East conflict, according to AFP.
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PARIS – The French police stopped an apparent bomb attack outside a US bank in Paris early on March 28 when they arrested a person about to set off a homemade explosive device, officials and sources close to the case told AFP.
The incident occurred around 3.30am in front of a Bank of America building in the chic 8th arrondissement, a couple of streets from the Champs-Elysees.
The police grabbed the suspect just after he placed a device, made of 5 litres of liquid, believed to be fuel, and an ignition system, one of the sources said.
After his arrest, the suspect claimed to be both a minor and a Senegalese citizen, according to a police source, who cautioned that the authorities were still verifying his identity.
He was accompanied by a second person, who took flight when officers arrived to arrest the pair.
The ignition component had 650g of explosive powder in it, according to an initial assessment.
The whole device was taken to the Paris police’s forensics laboratory for full analysis.
France’s counter-terrorism prosecutor’s office told AFP that it had immediately taken over the investigation and confirmed that the suspect caught was in police custody.
It said the probe it launched was into “attempted damage by fire or other dangerous means in connection with a terrorist undertaking” and a “terrorist criminal conspiracy”.
Both the Paris judicial police and France’s domestic intelligence service, the General Directorate for Internal Security, were involved in the probe, the office told AFP.
Allegedly recruited for €600
According to a police source, the suspect said he had been recruited via the Snapchat app to carry out the bombing in exchange for the sum of €600 (S$900).
When the patrolling officers arrested him, he was about to ignite the device with a lighter.
A separate police source told AFP that while he was placing the charge, the accomplice stepped back, apparently to take a photo or video of the crime with his mobile phone.
A spokesperson for Bank of America, whose US headquarters is in Charlotte, North Carolina, told AFP that the bank was aware of the situation and in communication with the French authorities.
The suspect said he had been recruited via Snapchat to carry out the bombing in exchange for €600 (S$900).
PHOTO: REUTERS
On social media platform X, French Interior Minister Laurent Nunez hailed the speedy action by the police officers given “the current international situation”.
Since the outbreak of the war in the Middle East, European countries have been on high alert for potential attacks on Iranian dissidents, Jewish places of worship and US-Israeli assets.
Another source close to the case told AFP that the foiled plot appeared to be “the concretisation of the Iranian threat towards American and Israeli interests everywhere in Europe”.
Mr Nunez said that, in France, “vigilance remains more than ever at a high level”. AFP
