Teen suspect in French bar grenade attack in custody

A 17-year-old suspected of having lobbed a grenade into a crowded bar in the southeastern French city of Grenoble has been arrested and is in police custody, a prosecutor said on Friday.

France launched a manhunt after the blast on February 12 wounded 15 revelers in the Alpine city’s Aksehir bar, six of them seriously.

The teenager was arrested on Wednesday for a separate case involving an attempted drugs-related killing in Grenoble, Lyon prosecutor Thierry Dran said.

Upon questioning he then implicated himself for the grenade attack before retracting his statement, Lyon prosecutor Thierry Dran said.

But investigators still had the “material evidence” needed to convict him of the crime, the lawyer added, without elaborating.

Shortly after 8:00 pm (1900 GMT) on Wednesday February 12, a hooded man armed with an assault rifle stepped through the doors of the Aksehir bar in a rough area of Grenoble.

He pulled the pin on a fragmentation grenade without saying a word and then fled.

In the attack’s aftermath investigators played down the possibility of it being a “terrorist attack,” pointing to a suspected connection to the illicit drug trade.

Gang-related violence has become increasingly frequent in Grenoble and its suburbs.