crime
Louvre and Palace of Versailles reopen
The Palace of Versailles was evacuated in the afternoon (archive photo). photo
© Lionel Bonaventure/AFP/dpa
After the Louvre, the Palace of Versailles and the Gare de Lyon in Paris will also be evacuated on Saturday due to threats. France has the highest terror alert level. Then in the evening: the all-clear.
After their evacuation, the Parisians Louvre and Palace of Versailles reopen. The French tourist attractions evacuated their halls on Saturday after threats. In the evening, France’s Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin gave the all-clear.
No explosive device was discovered and no attack took place, he said. There are many calls with threats of assassination, especially in schools. Both facilities announced their reopening on Sunday on X (formerly Twitter).
According to a spokeswoman, the Louvre received a written threat on Saturday. According to information from the radio station “Europe 1”, the threat against the castle was received anonymously on a police website.
The threats came at a time of unrest in the country: on Friday, an Islamist-radicalized young man killed a teacher with a knife and seriously injured three other people in a school in Arras in northern France. Since then, France has been on the highest terror alert level. Up to 7,000 soldiers from the anti-terror unit “Sentinelle” will be deployed across the country by Monday.
The attack in Arras took place almost three years to the day after the fatal attack on history teacher Samuel Paty. The 47-year-old was killed by an attacker in a Paris suburb on October 16, 2020 and then beheaded.