PARIS, Dec 6 (Reuters) - A parcel bomb killed a legal
secretary and injured five other people on Thursday in a central
Paris building housing a law firm partly owned by French
President Nicolas Sarkozy.
 

A secretary in the Gouet-Jenselme law practice died and
lawyer Olivier Brane was rushed to hospital with serious
injuries, officials said. 
 

The parcel had been addressed to Brane, they said. Sarkozy,
a former lawyer, retains a 30 percent stake in the Arnaud Claude
and Associates firm which shares the building.
 

"The bomb exploded on the fourth floor, not on the floor
where the law firm of the current president is based," Christian
Charriere-Bournazel, the future head of the Paris bar
association, told reporters at the scene.
 

The Gouet-Jenselme practice specialises in divorce,
insurance and real estate cases.
 

A second suspect package was being defused in the same
building on Boulevard des Malesherbes, police said.
 

A dozen police vans, military personnel and several fire
trucks lined the streets near the building in western Paris, a
Reuters reporter said. A large area around the lawyers' offices
was cordoned off.
 

"Michele Alliot-Marie, the interior minister, condemns this
cowardly and odious act with the utmost firmness," the interior
ministry said in a statement. Alliot-Marie will return from a
trip from Brussels and visit the scene of the explosion.
 

"It is a criminal act," the mayor of Paris, Bertrand
Delanoe, told reporters near the building.
 

Paris Public Prosecutor Jean-Claude Marin visited the scene
as well as the head of the French police force, Frederic
Pechenard.