The Anti-Muslim bombings in Paris, Cannes and Nice were a series of three terror bombings carried out by anti-Muslim extremists in French cities in the 1970s and 1980s.
The first attack happened in the early hours of October 4, 1972, when a bomb exploded in the Librairie Palestine, a PLO bookstore in Paris established in 1970. The other two attacks, in 1988, targeted Sonacotra hostels in Cannes and near Nice that were frequented by North African immigrants. In total one person was killed (in the Nice hostel bombing) and 16 were injured.
On December 19, 1988, 2 firebombs exploded in a hostel for immigrant workers from North Africa in Cagnes-sur-Mer, a town located about 7 miles from Nice, injuring 12 and killing 1. This followed the bombing of a similar hostel in Cannes on May 9 that injured 2. Although police spokesmen reported that most of the residents in the building in Cagnes-sur-Mer were Tunisian, the lone fatality was George Iordachescu, a Romanian exile.
False flag
The bombers posed as an extremist Zionist group, calling themselves the Masada Action and Defense Movement (French: Mouvement d'Action et Défense Masada), and leaving anti-Islam leaflets bearing Stars of David at the scene of one of the 1988 bombings. The Zionist moniker was a false flag – in 1989, 18 members of the neo-Nazi French and European Nationalist Party were arrested for the bombings, which had been intended to provoke tensions between Arabs and Jews in France.