2023-10-14 21:15:18
© Reuters.
PARIS (Reuters) – French President Emmanuel Macron on Saturday deployed up to 7,000 troops to increase security patrols as bomb warnings forced the evacuation of the Louvre museum, a day after a teacher was killed in an Islamist attack.
France was placed on maximum security alert on Friday after a 20-year-old man stabbed and killed a teacher and seriously injured two other people at a school in the northern French city of Arras.
The Louvre museum, the Palace of Versailles and Paris’ Gare de Lyon train station were evacuated on Saturday after receiving bomb alerts that turned out to be false alarms, Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said.
He declined to comment on the investigation into the Arras attack, but said a “jihadist atmosphere” had developed following events in the Middle East, where Israel is conducting a military offensive against Hamas fighters following last Saturday’s deadly attack.
“We think that absolutely abhorrent geopolitics have allowed a certain number of people to act in the name of radical Islam,” Darmanin told a news conference.
Macron’s office said the soldiers would be deployed until Monday night, until further notice, as part of an ongoing security operation in the central region of major cities and tourist sites.
The latest security warning comes as France hosts the Rugby World Cup and less than a year before Paris hosts the Olympic Games, which include plans for an opening ceremony outside a stadium and a parade along of the River Seine.
(Reporting by Leigh Thomas)
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