6 HURT BY BOMB AT STUDENT PARTY

Gulf Times
Nov 13 2008
Qatar

MONTPELLIER: At least six students from Eastern Europe were injured
yesterday in southern France when they set off a homemade bomb at a
drunken party in a campus accommodation block, officials said.

Two of the party-goers were seriously injured in the blast, which
appears to have resulted from an experiment during a 20th birthday
party rather than from any terrorist intent, according to the
Montpellier prosecutor’s office.

Police said five young men – two Russians, a Moldovan, a Ukrainian
and an Armenian – and a Ukrainian woman were in the flat when the
device exploded at 4.20am. Another 100 people were evacuated from
the building.

"From the first results of the enquiry it doesn’t seem that we’re
dealing with terrorists but perhaps with some young people with
some background in chemistry, who wanted to test a homemade bomb,"
prosecutor Brice Robin said.

Nevertheless, he added, if clues ended up pointing to criminal intent,
his office would hand over the case to the anti-terrorist squad. One
of the Russians was from Chechnya, a republic with a history of
guerrilla violence.

According to emergency personnel, alcohol had been consumed at
the party.

The student who was renting the flat suffered third degree burns on
50% of his body and is in intensive care. A second student suffered
a perforated lung. Four more guests received treatment.

It is thought that a seventh witness was present and lightly hurt,
but fled the scene, police said.

Police found potassium nitrate, aluminium powder, caustic soda,
nitric acid and sulphuric acid in the flat, all of which are legally
on sale in France but which when mixed correctly can form an explosive.

The tenant of the third-storey flat was a Montpellier University
electrical engineering student who had previously followed a chemistry
course and is thought to have been the one who triggered the device,
Robin said.

The blast enveloped two rooms in flames and blew out all the windows
of the flat and those on the floors above and below.