09884

05/15/2002
EDITORIAL NUMBER=0-09884

FRENCH MOURN TERRORIST VICTIMS

Thousands of people turned out this week in the French seaport of Cherbourg to mourn eleven French navy engineers killed in a terrorist attack in Pakistan. The French workers were in a Pakistani navy bus in Karachi on May 8^th when a suicide bomber drove up beside them and detonated powerful explosives. Two Pakistanis were also killed, and nearly two dozen people, both French and Pakistani, were wounded. The engineers had been in Karachi to work on a submarine that France is building for the Pakistani navy.

As French President Jacques Chirac said at the memorial service in Cherbourg, "This crime is monstrous. Its authors will be punished. There can be no sanctuary for terrorists." President Chirac said that France is determined not to give in "to threats or blackmail" from terrorists.

The May 8^th attack is being investigated by Pakistani, French, and United States authorities. Since the attack, Pakistani police have arrested a number of people associated with extremist Islamic groups.

Since the September 11^th attacks on the U.S., France has played a significant role in the international war on terrorism. France sent an aircraft carrier battle group to the Arabian Sea to support the U.S.-led action against the al-Qaida and Taleban terrorists in Afghanistan. French planes helped airlift supplies to the area. And French engineers helped construct runways and other facilities at an air base in Manas, Kyrgyzstan.

This is not the first deadly act of terrorism in Karachi in the wake of the September 11^th attacks. In January, American journalist Daniel Pearl was kidnapped after going to a Karachi restaurant to arrange an interview with the leader of an extremist Muslim group. Several days later, the Wall Street Journal reporter was brutally murdered. A trial is now underway in Pakistan of four men charged in the killing.

As President George W. Bush said in a statement, the Karachi terrorism "underscores the dangers all our citizens and societies continue to face from such attacks, and strengthens our resolve to continue working together to fight terrorism at home and abroad."