French Police Seize Mobile Phone Guns

ROUEN, France (Reuters) - French police said on Friday they had seized two lethal mobile phones capable of shooting four bullets, with the digital touchpads used as triggers.

The black telephones, identical to normal mobile phones on the outside, were discovered in a raid on a suspected gangster's home on Tuesday in the northern town of Rouen.

The fake phones come apart in the middle to reveal a four-chamber secret compartment for .22 caliber bullets, which can be shot out of a protruding fake aerial.

"These would be lethal at 10 meters," said Michel Lavaud, head of a local police brigade.

Police seized the telephones along with 1,000 ecstasy pills, heroin, cannabis and about $25,000 at the home of a man suspected of armed robberies and drug trafficking.

Lavaud said police thought the weapons were of a kind believed to be made in eastern Europe and to have appeared in Belgium and the Netherlands in 2001.