2023-10-18 12:18:42
Six airports were evacuated on the morning of Wednesday October 18 in France, after “threats of attacks” received by email, a police source announced to Agence France-Presse. The airports concerned are Lille, Lyon (Bron), Nantes, Nice, Toulouse, Beauvais (north of Paris), this source said. A “removal of doubt” is underway, she added.
According to communication from Nice airport, however, it “There was just one suspicious package alert, something frequent, which required the establishment of a security perimeter. But everything is back to normal.”. For his part, a spokesperson for the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGAC) confirmed “bomb threats” and “air terminal evacuations” Wednesday morning on four platforms – Lille, Lyon, Toulouse and Beauvais – without being able to give further details immediately.
According to the DGAC’s online dashboard, three airports experienced significant delays shortly after midday: Toulouse-Blagnac (two hours on arrival, one and a half hours on departure), Lille-Lesquin (one and a half hours on arrival and departure) and Beauvais-Tillé (nearly two hours from departure).
By midday, several airports had communicated about bomb threats or forgotten luggage requiring intervention by the authorities. Beauvais airport evoked on his Facebook page “an anonymous threat received by several airports”.
At Bron airport – a business airport –, “there was a lifting of doubts, traffic resumed”, said the airport management. In Lille, “the terminal was evacuated around 10:30 a.m.”according to a spokesperson. “It’s not a busy day”she added.
Flights from Marrakech, Geneva and Constantine, which were due to land between 11:05 a.m. and 11:40 a.m., were diverted, it is stated on the Lille airport website. “State security services are on site”specifies the airport on X (formerly Twitter).
New bomb threat at the Palace of Versailles, evacuated
The Palace of Versailles, for its part, was once again the target of a bomb threat and was being evacuated around 1 p.m., the Yvelines prefecture announced to Agence France-Presse on Wednesday. “The evacuation is underway and has progressed well”she clarified, adding that“a doubt will be cleared by the mine clearance teams”. Like the two bomb threats Saturday afternoon and Tuesday targeting the same site, the reporting of this threat was made by the Moncommissariat.fr platform, specifies the prefecture. Also on Saturday, the Louvre Museum, located in the heart of Paris, also remained closed from midday, “for security reasons”.
The middle school of Dominique Bernard in Arras, the teacher murdered Friday in a jihadist attack, was also evacuated Monday morning due, again, to a bomb threat. The alert was “following a message received” via the Internet, the Pas-de-Calais prefecture had specified.
Dominique Bernard, a 57-year-old middle school French teacher, was stabbed to death on Friday by a radicalized 20-year-old former student, during an attack which also left three people injured. After this attack on Friday, and while France lives in fear of attacks, the country has been placed in an “attack emergency” situation, the highest level of the Vigipirate vigilance and protection system.
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