Grenade Tossed Into Store Hurts Worker

A grenade hidden inside a package exploded Thursday in a store on the Left Bank, a popular tourist area in central Paris, slightly injuring a store employee and causing minor damage.

A police official said someone threw a package through the window of the home decoration store about 2 p.m. and the grenade exploded after the owner picked it up to throw it out.

The employee’s eyes and face were injured, but his condition was not serious, the official said, speaking on customary condition of anonymity.

The suspect fled the scene in a car that was later found abandoned in a nearby neighborhood.

Investigators believed the attack may have been an act of revenge and did not call in anti-terrorism experts, the official said.

Last December, a bomb blew apart a crowded rush-hour subway train in Paris, killing four people and wounding 86 others. Algerian Muslim militants angry at France’s tacit support of its former colony are the prime suspects in that attack.