French Embassy Bombed In Tripoli, Wounding Two Guards; Shots Fired At French Embassy In Yemen

The French Embassy was hit Tuesday with a car bomb in Tripoli, wounding two French guards in the Libyan capital.

"This was a terrorist act ... aimed at killing," said Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius after he flew in to inspect the damage caused by the French Embassy car bomb and visit the wounded, one of whom had emergency surgery.

Security will be stepped up across a region where France has taken a leading role of late, first in pushing for a NATO air campaign to defend the Benghazi-based rebels from Gaddafi's forces, and most recently mounting its own assault in its former colony of Mali against Islamist insurgents who have profited from arms and fighters coming over the Sahara border from Libya, according to Reuters.

"This is a very worrying sign for the government," one Western diplomat in Libya told Reuters. "It will be a further deterrent for companies who have so far been reluctant to come to Libya."

A gunman fired shots outside France's embassy in Yemen in a separate incident Tuesday. Nobody was killed in the incident.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Philippe Lalliot told Reuters that France had not received any specific threat against the Tripoli embassy. It did not deny that it was more aware of the risk of an attack.