France

UPDATED: Several French airports evacuated due to bomb scare; France stepping up border security

cde.news desk 18 October 2023, 09:20 · 2 min read

epa10723161 French soldiers, part of the national security plan 'Vigipirate', keep watch as they secure the area near the Arc de Triomphe, in Paris, France, early 03 July 2023. Violence broke out all over France after police fatally shot a 17-year-old teenager during a traffic stop in Nanterre on 27 June. The French Interior Ministry released a provisional bulletin for 02 July reporting, on the fifth night of rioting, 719 people arrested nationwide and 45 police officers or gendarmes injured. EPA-EFE/OLIVIER MATTHYS

Eight French airports faced security alerts on Wednesday and several were evacuated for checks, the DGAC aviation authority said, and the Palace of Versailles closed again due to its third security scare in five days.

The airports affected were Toulouse, Biarritz and Pau in the southwest, Nice in the southeast, Lyon in the east, Lille in the north, and Rennes and Nantes in western France, according to a DGAC spokesperson and the interior ministry.

Lille airport was evacuated due to a bomb scare, the airport had said earlier in the day on social media platform X.

France is stepping up security at the Belgian border, Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said after the killing of two people by an assailant in Brussels the night before.

“We don’t have information according to which he (the attacker) could be heading to France”, Darmanin told RTL radio but France will as a precaution “double the number of security agents at the border”.

MACRON SAYS ‘ISLAMIST TERRORISM’ RISING IN EUROPE

Europe is seeing a rise of “Islamist terrorism” and all states are threatened, French President Emmanuel Macron said on Tuesday during a visit to Albania, after Islamist killings of a teacher in France and two Swedish football fans in Belgium.

Macron spoke a day after a 45-year-old attacker, who identified himself as a member of Islamic State and claimed responsibility in a video posted online, killed the two Swedes fans in Brussels.

In Paris, a French anti-terrorism prosecutor said on Tuesday A 20-year-old man who fatally stabbed the schoolteacher and wounded three others in the northern city of Arras on Oct. 13 had pledged allegiance to Islamic State.

“We saw it again yesterday in Brussels. All European states are vulnerable, and there is indeed a resurgence of Islamist terrorism,” Macron said after talks with Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama in Tirana.

“Here, we reiterate our solidarity with our Belgian friends,” Macron said.

He added that in the coming days or weeks he might visit Israel, at war with Islamist group Hamas since militants burst through Gaza’s border fence and killed 1,300 people, mainly civilians, in a rampage through nearby Israeli communities.

“My desire,” Macron said, “is to be able to travel there when we can obtain a concrete agreement either on non-escalation or on humanitarian issues and more broadly on everything.

“Israel’s security, the fight against all terrorist groups, as well as the peace process and the political solution, are all interconnected,” he said. “This is the agenda we need to rediscover.”