PARIS, May 8: French Chief of Staff Gen Jean-Pierre Kelche says that it’s the “official” French belief that Al Qaeda’s hand in the attack perpetrated this morning against a busload of French naval employees is “not negligible.”

He was replying to journalists’ questions that whether France had yet been able to learn or determine who was behind the attack which killed ten French employees of the Direction de la Construction Navale (DCN) — and wounded another 12 — assigned to construction of an Agosta 90-B attack submarine, the second of three being built in Karachi for the Pakistani Navy as part of a Euros 763 million ($690 million) contract.

“It’s a little early to say, but there is a significant likelihood” of Al Qaeda involvement in the attack, Gen Kelche said.

According to an employee of the French Consulate, the explosion was so violent that it could be heard as many as three miles away and that parts of the car and bus, indeed bodyparts of the French passengers, were found more than 350 metres from the point of impact.

At the DCN headquarters at Cherbourg, where most of the employees killed or wounded were based, there was much grieving, especially on the part of other employees who’d been previously assigned to Karachi, but had just returned from a stint at the Pakistani naval shipyard where the submarine was being built by the DCN.

Fifteen French employees have been assigned to the submarine project on a regular and revolving basis. But the number had been reduced to a handful after the killing in January of Wall Street Journal correspondent Daniel Pearl. The DCN authorities had only recently decided to increase the number, following the appearance of a relative return to calm in Pakistan’s economic capital.

Some DCN employees recently returned from Karachi, queried at Cherbourg, noted that they’d expressed their concern to DCN officials at Cherbourg upon their return from Pakistan over the relative lack of protection they were accorded while working in Pakistan, but a DCN official - also just returned from Karachi - immediately refuted the claims, saying that the French employees were so well protected that sometimes given the non-violent atmosphere, he felt that the armed protection they were being provided appeared excessive.

Mrs Michele Alliot-Marie, the French defence minister, has been asked by President Chirac to take all measures necessary on the ground to ensure that French nationals in Pakistan be heretofore better protected against such attacks.