5 Die, 60 Injured in Fifth Paris Bombing in 10 Days : Store Full of Parents, Children

Two men in a passing car threw a bomb at a crowded, cut-rate clothing and textile store in Paris today, setting off an explosion that killed five people and injured more than 60. At the same time, the French government found itself embarrassed by a poster campaign designed to track down the terrorists who have plagued Paris for nine months.

The explosion, which was the fifth bombing in the last 10 days and which brought the highest death toll so far, blasted the Tati store on the Rue de Rennes, in the busy Montparnasse quarter on the Left Bank of the Seine. Because Paris schools are closed Wednesdays, the store is often crowded with parents and their children on those days.

“The sight was unbearable,” said a journalist for the magazine Le Point, which has offices in the same building. “There were many women, many children, with blood all over.”

Informed of the latest explosion, Premier Jacques Chirac called an emergency meeting of his top security officials.

Posters Offer Reward

The bombing came a few hours after French officials, in a dramatic act unseen in Paris since the days of the Nazi occupation in World War II, started putting up the first of 200,000 posters offering a 1-million-franc ($150,000) reward for information leading to the arrest of the two men pictured on them--Lebanese brothers accused of taking part in the bombing campaign in order to blackmail France into releasing their older brother from jail.

But two men who identified themselves as the brothers--Maurice Ibrahim Abdallah, 23, and Robert Ibrahim Abdallah, 20--held a news conference in Tripoli, Lebanon, and denied that they had anything to do with the bombings. They said they have not been in France in two years and offered to turn themselves over to French authorities.

In Paris, Laurent Davenas, an official investigator, said the bomb was thrown from a car driven past the store. He said two mustached men were in the car, a black BMW. Police began a hunt for the fleeing car.

Witnesses said the explosion was violent, destroying the ground floor and shaking the rest of the six-story building, shattering all its windows. The wounded were treated on the sidewalk in front of the store.

10 Killed Over 9 Months

Police said 5 were dead, 11 seriously injured, and the rest, about 50 persons, injured less seriously. In all, since the campaign began nine months ago, the bombs have killed 10 persons and injured almost 300. In the past 10 days, the terrorists have attacked a post office at the Paris City Hall, a cafeteria in a shopping center, a restaurant on the Champs-Elysees and the drivers’ license bureau at Paris police headquarters.

Two organizations have claimed responsibility for the bombings, demanding the release of three prisoners convicted or charged with terrorist crimes. The police believe, however, that their main goal is the release of one of the prisoners, the older brother of the two men on the poster--Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, 35, who is believed to head an organization known as the Lebanese Revolutionary Armed Factions. It has boasted of killing a U.S. military attache and an Israeli diplomat four years ago.

In Lebanon, the press conference by the Abdallah brothers was clearly aimed at humiliating the French government. “We haven’t done anything,” Maurice Ibrahim Abdallah said. “We will turn ourselves over to the French or Lebanese judicial authorities if a charge is brought against us.”

He said he left France two years ago when he had financial problems. “I could not pay my tuition,” he said.