Free Republic

PARIS (Reuters) - An explosion that ripped through a chemical factory in southwest France three years ago, killing 31 people and wounding more than 2,000 was an industrial accident, two judicial reports have been quoted as saying. Experts had previously said the September 2001 blast at the AZF factory, a unit of oil giant Total, was most likely an accident, although a deliberate attack had not been entirely ruled out. French newspaper Le Journal du dimanche quoted one report by judicial experts as saying there was no proof the explosion was a deliberate attack. The second report concluded the explosion...

French backtrack on chemical attack claim By Elizabeth Bryant United Press International From the International Desk Published 12/19/2002 1:29 PM PARIS, Dec. 19 (UPI) -- The French government appeared to be backtracking Thursday from suggestions earlier this week that a biological or chemical attack may have been foiled, as laboratory tests of materials seized in police raids yielded no conclusive evidence. On Tuesday, Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy told the National Assembly that police had seized empty containers and vials of suspicious-looking fluids and powders, as well as a jumpsuit apparently designed to protect from a biological or chemical attack.

<p>PARIS -- French daily paper Le Figaro said Thursday a man known to police for Islamic militant sympathies was found dead at the site of the Sept. 21 blast at TotalFinaElf's (TOT) AZF fertilizer plant in Toulouse in which 29 people died.</p>

The French Railways Company, SNCF, is employing about ten thousand staff to search all railway lines for bombs. This follows the discovery of a device near the city of Limoges a week and a half ago. In a letter, an unidentified terrorist organisation had alerted the French government to the presence of the bomb. They warned of nine others planted at sites along the railway network. It has only just become known that the French government has been receiving threatening letters for nearly three months from the organisation, which calls itself the AZF. Last Monday, an attempt to pay the...