But she could not give further details about the boy linked to Saturday’s hoax.
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The report links them to far-right French-Israeli hacktivist Gregory Chelli, who denies any connection to them in a Facebook post.
Shoppers fled in panic and stores pulled down their shutters on the orders of police as Paris feared it was once again being targeted by terrorists.
But it turned out to be a false alarm and police opened an investigation into the “reporting of an imaginary crime”, which could be punished by up to two years in prison and a €30,000 fine.
The alert had been sparked by a hoax telephone call, according to French media. And there was a moment of panic and we had customers in the restaurant and they told us to hide, to put the people in the cellar. “We just did it for the thrill and to become known”, the hacker added.
A major police operation was launched, involving more than 100 officers. “We protected them because there were girls who were nearly collapsing”, she told Reuters TV.
France is on high alert after a number of terror attacks in the past few months, including an atrocity in Nice where a man used a lorry to run over a crowd.
Pascal Baroukh works in a clothes shop opposite the church, and he said that the recent spate of attacks has put people in Paris on edge.
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Interior minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, issued a statement confirming the false alarm and said “the circumstances around the intervention” were yet to be determined.
