France on alert after shooting in school, letter-bomb blast at IMF office

France is on high-alert after the shooting was reported in a high school campus and the letter bomb-blast at IMF office in Paris.

Several people were injured in a shooting today at a high school in the southern French town of Grasse, police said.

One person was arrested and another was on the run after the shooting at the Tocqueville high school, a police source told AFP, asking not to be named.

All schools in the town some 40 kilometres west of Nice have been locked down, education authorities said.

Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve cut short a trip to the northern Somme area because of the Grasse shooting, as well as a letter bomb blast at the offices of the International Monetary Fund in Paris today.

Letter bomb blast

An employee at the Paris offices of the International Monetary Fund suffered injuries to her hands and face after opening a letter which exploded today, police said.

Several people were evacuated from the building near the Arc de Triomphe monument "as a precaution", a police source said.

Although no link has been established at this stage, a Greek far-left group claimed today that it had sent a parcel bomb to the German finance ministry in Berlin, more than six years after waging a similar campaign against European officials.

"We claim responsibility for sending a booby-trapped parcel to the German finance minister," the Conspiracy of Fire Nuclei group said in a statement posted on an anti- establishment website.

German police said yesterday that they had discovered the "explosive" package at Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble's office building, a day before he was due to host his new US counterpart Steven Mnuchin.