Paris Bomb Probe Focuses on Serb, Algerian Groups

French investigators analyzing the wreckage of the subway car destroyed in Tuesday’s fatal bombing remained silent Wednesday about their findings, as security was stepped up across France and other European countries.

Pranksters heightened a general state of public alarm in France by calling in at least 31 fake bomb threats, in one case causing the evacuation of 8,000 visitors from the Louvre.

Three more of the people severely burned in the bombing died Wednesday, raising the death toll from the rush-hour attack to seven; 11 of the injured remained hospitalized in critical condition.

With all of Paris wondering whether the blast was a frightening signal of more terror to come, Interior Minister Jean-Louis Debre took the unusual step of offering a reward of 1 million francs (about $208,000) to anyone providing information that led to the arrest of the bombers.

Late Wednesday afternoon, Prime Minister Alain Juppe said investigators are following “several possible hypotheses” but was unwilling to reveal any details. “You will understand that, in this kind of inquest, as long as we have no certitude, discretion is a must,” he said.

But government spokesman Francois Baroin said investigators are focusing on two leads: the possibility that Islamic militants from Algeria had planted the powerful, skillfully timed bomb; and the possibility that Serbian nationalists, angered by recent French military activities in Bosnia-Herzegovina, had done it.

Unofficially, there were signs the Algerian connection was the likeliest. “That would be my first hypothesis, but only because of logic and history, not because I have any evidence,” said Charles Villeneuve, author of two books on terrorism. “Because France is always the country were Arab groups settle their scores.”

In Paris, there were French media reports that Algerian journalists in recent weeks had predicted a terrorist act in the French capital. Agence France-Presse, the French news agency, reported that the Algerian newspaper La Tribune carried a front-page story Wednesday stating, “The bomb attack in Paris leads one to believe that the GIA has gone into action.”

The GIA, or Armed Islamic Group, is the Algerian insurgent group that hijacked a French airliner in Algiers in December, killing three passengers and ordering the plane flown to France. When the plane landed at Marseilles, commandos stormed it, killing all four hijackers and freeing the remaining 169 passengers on board.

Other reports from Algeria had a rival Islamic insurgent group threatening France with reprisals for its anti-terrorist, preemptive roundups, which the French police have been conducting in Muslim quarters of Paris and other cities.

The other hypothesis, that Serbian nationalists might have planted the bomb, stemmed from France’s increasingly strident stance on the Bosnia conflict. France is most recently reported to have secretly, and unilaterally, sent Mirage jets to bomb the Bosnian Serb stronghold of Pale, in retaliation for the deaths last weekend of two French peacekeepers.

Belgrade condemned the suggestion that Serbs had avenged the alleged air strikes with the subway attack. A statement by Tanjug, the official Yugoslav news agency, said this thinking “fits in well with the unprecedented anti-Serb propaganda that the French media have been propagating, which in the past few days has turned into hysteria.”