Several regional airports in France and Belgium were evacuated after threats of attack, with the Palace of Versailles outside of Paris seeing its third evacuation in days.
(Bloomberg) — Several regional airports in France and Belgium were evacuated after threats of attack, with the Palace of Versailles outside of Paris seeing its third evacuation in days.
The Lille, Lyon-Bron, Nice, Nantes, Biarritz, Toulouse and Paris Beauvais airports were evacuated, the national police said. The airport of Ostend-Bruges in Belgium also was evacuated after an alert, according to a report in Le Soir newspaper.
The bomb threat at Lyon-Bron was a false alarm, local authorities said in a post on the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter. Authorities in the region where Biarritz lies also said no serious threat was found and that the airport was reopening, even though air-traffic disruptions were to be expected.
France and Belgium have moved to the highest level of terror alerts after deadly attacks took place in the past week, a few days only after the beginning of the Israel-Hamas war. The Louvre museum in Paris, one of the most popular tourist destinations alongside the Palace of Versailles, also was evacuated on Saturday. In the northern town of Arras, a teacher was fatally stabbed by a Muslim perpetrator last Friday. In Brussels, two Swedish football fans were murdered on Oct. 16, with an investigation into a possible terrorist-related motive under way.
In coming months, monitoring the terror threat risks being a more difficult task for authorities in the Paris region, given plans to host Olympic Games next summer in the French capital. An opening ceremony in the city’s heart, along the Seine river, will be an open-air event and likely harder to keep safe.
Shares in Air France-KLM fell as much as 6.2% on the news while Paris airport operator Aeroports de Paris SA fell as much as 4.4%.
Paris-Charles de Gaulle and Orly airports were not affected.
A spokesman for Air France, part of Air France-KLM, said the flagship carrier was “monitoring the situation in real time.”
(Updates with other airports, Versailles evacuated.)
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