French Seek Potential Bomb Matter

French anti-terrorism prosecutors are investigating two thefts of a fertilizer often used in terrorist bombs that took place in central France and Normandy, where President Bush and other world leaders will gather next month for D-Day celebrations, officials said Thursday.

Thieves stole about 2,640 pounds of ammonium nitrate from agricultural storage facilities in the Haute Loire region and on Normandy’s north Atlantic coast during the last month, a high-ranking official in the Paris prosecutor’s office said.

The cases raised concerns because of the quantity of missing fertilizer and because the terrorist threat has intensified in Europe since the March train bombings in Madrid, which killed 191 people and are blamed on Al Qaeda.

French police have not determined whether the thefts are related to terrorist activity or were carried out by the same person or group, the official cautioned Thursday.

In addition to Islamic extremists, violent Basque and Corsican groups are potential suspects because of their history of stealing ammonium nitrate and other bomb-making materials in France, the official said.

The involvement of specialized anti-terrorism prosecutors based in Paris underscores the seriousness of the matter. The fact that one theft took place about 60 miles from the site of the D-day events in Normandy has also attracted the attention of French and U.S. law enforcement, officials said.

Bush, French President Jacques Chirac and Russian President Vladimir V. Putin are among 17 world leaders expected for elaborate ceremonies marking the 60th anniversary of the Allied landing on the beaches of Nazi-occupied France on June 6, 1944.

“Terrorists could use these materials to make explosives of great size,” said the official in the prosecutor’s office, who asked to remain anonymous. “There have been a number of these thefts and it begins to become very worrisome.”

Suspects affiliated with Al Qaeda used vehicle bombs containing ammonium nitrate in November’s attacks on synagogues and British targets in Istanbul, Turkey, and in an attack on Western tourists on the island of Bali in 2002. The Bali bombers used about 220 pounds of fertilizer-based explosives. The truck bomb that blew up the federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995 mixed fuel with more than 4,000 pounds of ammonium nitrate fertilizer.

The first theft under investigation here took place during the week of April 12 at the seaport of Honfleur in Normandy, according to officials. About 1,100 pounds of fertilizer were stolen from a dock and taken away by truck, the judicial official said. The recent arrest of a suspected Basque terrorist in the area raises the possibility that ETA, the Basque terror group that uses France as a base for operations in Spain, was involved, the official said.

The second theft occurred May 6 on a farm in the village of Le Puy-en-Velay in the Haute Loire region and involved 14 sacks of ammonium nitrate, each containing about 110 pounds of the substance, the official said.

Because of the readiness with which the fertilizer can be utilized in explosives, ammonium nitrate is tightly regulated in Europe. But farmers are nonetheless careless about storing the cheap, plentiful substance securely and thefts have increased, the official said.

“Thefts are multiplying in surprisingly lax conditions,” the official said.

“We don’t have the means to know yet if these cases involve terrorists or farmers stealing from each other. We are trying to make farmers more sensitive to this problem.”