Twelve people were wounded when a grenade exploded in a bar in France’s southeastern city of Grenoble on Wednesday night.

“Someone came in and threw a grenade, apparently without saying a word, and ran away,” prosecutor Francois Touret-de-Courcy told journalists at the scene, where emergency workers had cordoned off the area.

Two people were in critical condition, he said, adding that “many clients” were present when the grenade exploded, shortly after 8:00 pm at the Aksehir bar in the Olympic Village neighbourhood, built when the picturesque city hosted the 1968 Winter Olympics.

Mr Touret-de-Courcy said investigators had not yet identified a motive but did not believe it was a “terrorist attack”.

“There’s nothing to make us think it’s linked to terrorism,” he said, calling it an “act of extreme violence” that “may be linked to a settling of scores”.