PARIS SEARCHES 3,000,000 ARABS IN TERRORIST HUNT
PARIS SEARCHES 3,000,000 ARABS IN TERRORIST HUNT
AFTER 3 DEAD AND 94 INJURED IN TRAIN BOMBING
AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL FILES PROTEST
PARIS, 12/06/96, (Reuter) - French authorities studied tighter securityon Paris trains Friday as investigators probed a mystery blast in the countrysidelast month that may have been a test for Tuesday's train bomb that killedthree people.
False bomb alerts have disrupted traffic on the tightly-guarded Paris undergroundrail network since the bomb planted by suspected Algerian Islamic guerrillastore through a train at the Port Royal station.
The blast claimed a third victim when a 25-year-old Moroccan student, MohamedBenchaou, died of his injuries Thursday night.
Twenty people were still in the hospital Friday out of a total of 94 treatedfor injuries.
The French Human Rights League called on authorities not to make the estimatedthree million Arabs in France scapegoats for the attack.
It asked that police refrain from systematically treating Arabs as suspectsand singling them out in crowds for identity checks and body-searches.
The head of the Paris regional transport authority said he was studyingextra security to seal the areas under seats in trains and buses to makeit harder to conceal bombs.
Traffic on two lines of the RER suburban express railway was thrown intodisarray Friday after suspect packages were found at Gare du Nord and Chateletstations.
Both proved to be false alarms but tens of thousands of commuters were delayedor made to evacuate trains and stations.
There were similar false alarms in the southern port city of Marseille.
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