2023-10-17 14:40:31
The Palace of Versailles, one of France’s main tourist attractions, was evacuated this Tuesday due to a bomb alert, three days after a similar warning.
“For security reasons, the Palace of Versailles evacuates visitors and closes its doors for today,” the establishment announced on its account on the social network X (ex-Twitter).
The residence built in the 17th century by Louis XIV, the “Sun King”, about 20 kilometers southwest of Paris, was already evacuated on Saturday afternoon due to an anonymous bomb warning on the moncomissariat.fr site.
This Tuesday’s alert was received at the same site and “was not taken lightly,” said a source close to the case.
“The bomb squads will work after the total evacuation,” which was almost completed at the beginning of the afternoon, a police source said.
France increased the alert level on Friday to “attack emergency”, after a radicalized man killed a high school teacher in Arras (north) and in a context of tension due to the conflict between Israel and the Islamist group Hamas.
Last Saturday, the Palace of Versailles began to be evacuated due to a bomb alert, a police source told AFP.
The notice came through an anonymous message sent to a complaints portal, the source said, adding that the royal residence built in the 17th century by Louis XIV about 20 km west of Paris remained closed for the rest of the day.
This Monday, France paid tribute to Dominique Bernard, a teacher murdered by a young radicalized Islamist in an attack that forced authorities to increase security and promise to protect schools as a “sanctuary” against the “obscurantism.”
The murder on Friday of Bernard in Arras (northern France) occurred almost three years after fellow professor Samuel Paty – beheaded by a Russian refugee of Chechen origin – and in a context of tension due to the conflict between Israel and Hamas.
The educational center where Bernard taught French was evacuated this Monday morning due to a bomb alert, an AFP journalist confirmed.
On Friday, “while trying to protect his students, he was a victim of Islamist terrorism,” President Emmanuel Macron wrote this Monday on the social network .
In his message published hours before the weekly start of classes and the planned tributes to Bernard and Paty, Macron reiterated to teachers that the country is “at their side.” “The terrorists know it: there is no Republic without schools,” he added.
The situation is also tense in France, a country that is home to the largest Jewish community in Europe, in the midst of conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas after its surprise attack on October 7.
Faced with the fear of “importing” this conflict, which has been agitating French political life for days, and to defuse criticism from the right and the extreme right over the attack in Arras, the government seeks to be more firm.
The Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, indicated that since October 7, 102 people have been arrested for anti-Semitic acts or advocacy of terrorism, and announced his intention to accelerate the expulsion of 193 radicalized foreigners.
In the left opposition, the position of the leader of the radical wing Jean-Luc Mélenchon, under pressure to classify Hamas as “terrorist”, could break the leftist Nupes front.
On Sunday, the Communist Party advocated breaking with an alliance in “stalemate” with Mélenchon’s formation, La Francia Insumisa. The socialists must debate the issue this Tuesday.
#Due #bomb #alert #Palace #Versailles #France #evacuated