Blast Injures Niece of French Minister

BASTIA, Corsica — The niece of French Interior Minister Charles Pasqua was slightly hurt when a bomb exploded Thursday night outside her apartment in Bastia, the northern capital of Corsica, police said Friday.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack but the police said it was only hours after a Cabinet meeting in Paris ratified Pasqua’s decision to dissolve a separatist group, the Corsican Movement for Self-Determination.

Isabelle Nicquet, a 29-year-old employee at the Bastia police station, had minor bruises and her one-year-old son was treated for shock at a local hospital.

In an apparently renewed crackdown on separatists seeking independence for the Mediterranean island from mainland France, Pasqua, himself of Corsican origin, also removed government officials in Upper and Lower Corsica on Thursday.