A powerful bomb exploded in a car parked on a busy street in the heart of Paris today, killing a 33-year-old pregnant woman and injuring 63 persons, 10 of them seriously. French officials immediately blamed the Syrian secret service and Interior Minister Gaston Defferre ordered the expulsion of two senior diplomats at the Syrian Embassy, Assistant Military Attache Maj. Hassan Ali and Third Secretary Michail Kassouha.
Damascus retaliated by expelling two French diplomats and Syrian Foreign Minister Abdul Khali Khaddam cancelled a stopover in Paris he was to have made tonight.
Police believe the bomb, which exploded at 9 a.m. on the Rue Marboeuf, a block from the Champs Elysee, was intended to destroy the offices of the anti-Syrian Arab-language weekly Al Wattan Al Arabi. The Syrian Ambassador to France, Yussuf Shakkur, accused Israeli agents of the bombing in order to harm France’s relations with the Arab world and in particular, Syria and the Palestinians.
Some police officials suspect that the perpetrator was Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, an international terrorist known as Carlos, said to be seeking revenge for the recent arrest in Paris of two of his accomplices. Carlos has sent threatening letters to French officials.
Ten terrorist acts have been perpetrated in France during the past year, including a train bombing which killed six people, the murder of the Assistant Military Attache at the U.S. Embassy, Col. Charles Ray, and the murder on April 3 of the Israeli diplomat, Yaacov Bar-Simantov.
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