BOMBS IN PARIS

Press, Volume CXVI, Issue 34131, 19 April 1976, Page 13

BOMBS IN PARIS

(N.Z .PA.-Reuter—Copyright) PARIS, April 18. Three bomb blasts in Paris in 48 hours, and the discovery of two other bombs that were def used before they could explode. have puzzled French investigators. No political group has claimed responsibility for the bombs. One went off near the stock market in a building containing the offices of the management-backed French Labour Federation. Another, made of sticks of dynamite, damaged a court building at Versailles. A similar bomb was found and defused near a court building in eastern Paris. Two blasts early yesterday I morning rocked the elegant | sixteenth Arondissement. (The first started a fire that destroyed five floors of an office building near the Israeli Embassy. The second began a small fire in a block of flats near the Bois de Boulogne and close to the Syrian Embassy. Paris has resounded with the calls of student protest in the last few days as have Nantes, Perpignan, and other provincial cities. Wednesday and Thursday have been designated “action days” when students from all over France will meet in Paris to protest against Government reforms aimed at producing more job-oriented courses in France’s 75 universities

Some national newspapers have criticised the police for the violent way they have dealt with student demonstrations. “L’Aurore,” a conservative newspaper, said policemen had “brutally charged without any provocation” students involved in a discussion with a senior police officer. “L’Humanite,” the communist newspaper, accused the police of deliberately placing agents provocateurs in the student movement.