Suspected letter bomb explosion at IMF in Paris injures one

Paris police say an operation is ongoing at International Monetary Fund offices following a letter-bomb explosion in which one person was injured, Sky News reported. See more

#fmi Une intervention est en cours pour une personne blessée par un colis suspect avec, a priori, un artifice à l'intérieur.

— Préfecture de police (@prefpolice) March 16, 2017

An IMF employee was injured in the hands and face. The person injured was not the person to whom the letter was addressed, The Local reported. The Telegraph reported a judicial source as saying the device appears to have been a banger or firecracker. “This was a pyrotechnical device, or a large banger. It was relatively home-made, and was in no way a bomb,”Michel Cadot, Paris police chief said, adding the victim was injured in the face and eardrum in the explosion, but “her life is in no danger and she is not badly injured”. The Paris prefect said the device was probably homemade, Reuters reported.

March 15 Berlin device

On March 15, a package containing explosives was discovered in the mail room of the Federal Finance Ministry in Berlin. The Conspiracy of Cells of Fire, a Greek far-left group, claimed that they had sent the package to finance minister Wolfgang Schaeuble. In 2010, the group sent letter bombs to European politicians including Angela Merkel, Nicolas Sarkozy and Silvio Berlusconi, and to former head of the European commission Jose Manuel Barroso, the former head of the European Commission. The organisation was designated as a foreign terrorist group in October 2011, by the US Department of State.

UPDATE March 17

Both the Berlin and the Paris packages were likely sent from Greece, DW reported. Both used the name of a Greek opposition lawmaker as sender and French investigators found “residues of Greek stamps.”

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