PARIS, Dec 16: Police found a bundle of dynamite in a major Paris department store on Tuesday after AFP received a letter from an unknown group threatening attacks unless France pulls its troops out of Afghanistan.

Police cordoned off Printemps Haussmann store and the French capital’s best known shopping boulevard while hordes of shoppers and tourists were evacuated at the height of the Christmas shopping season.

A group calling itself the Afghan Revolutionary Front had earlier sent a letter to AFP warning of “several bombs” in the upscale store and demanding that France withdraw its 2,600 troops by the end of February.

Police used sniffer dogs to locate five sticks of dynamite in a third-floor toilet cistern in the Printemps menswear building, one of a group of famous shops on the renowned and tourist-dense Boulevard Haussmann.

Interior Minister Michele Alliot-Marie said no detonator was found, meaning that the device could not explode, and a police official described the find as old sticks of dynamite fastened together with a piece of cord.

Briefing reporters at the scene, Alliot-Marie said: “From what we know so far, this was not a device that was intended to explode.” The letter, which AFP handed to police, linked the warning to the French deployment in Afghanistan, where Nato and US forces are battling Taliban insurgents alongside government forces.

“Send the message to your president that he must withdraw his troops from our country before the end of February 2009 or else we will take action in your capitalist department stores and this time, without warning,” it said.

Alliot-Marie cautioned that investigators would be wary of the claims contained in the letter, which “could point them toward false leads.”—AFP