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French Financial Prosecutor’s Office Evacuated Over Bomb Scare | ASHARQ AL-AWSAT English Archive 2005 -2017
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French gendarmes with a detection dog and police stand in front of the French financial prosecutor’s offices following a bomb alert in central Paris, France, March 20, 2017. REUTERS/Benoit Tessier


Around 100 people were briefly evacuated from the French financial prosecutor’s offices in central Paris on Monday due over a bomb alert.

The alert was prompted by an anonymous caller who told police that there was a bomb in the building that houses prosecutors investigating high-level financial crimes, a police source said.

Bomb disposal experts were sent to the site in central Paris, which was cordoned off. The alert was lifted after a police search of the premises that took about 90 minutes.

The bomb scare comes after Saturday’s attack at Orly airport, the city’s second busiest airport, where a man who had been investigated for links to radical Islam was shot dead after assaulting a soldier on patrol and grabbing her rifle.

It was the third in a string of incidents to hit France in recent days.

Last Thursday, a letter bomb sent by a Greek far-left group to the Paris offices of the International Monetary Fund injured a secretary.

That incident came the same day that a 16-year-old pupil opened fire at his school in southern France, wounding four fellow students and a teacher.

The financial prosecutor’s office has been at the center of a number of high-profile cases in recent weeks, including investigations into allegations of financial wrongdoing by leading presidential candidates Marine Le Pen and Francois Fillon. It is also investigating the far-right National Front party of Marine Le Pen over alleged fake jobs.