(Paris) The day after an Islamist attack in Arras, France lives in fear of attacks: two of the most famous monuments in the world, the Louvre museum and the Palace of Versailles, were evacuated and closed on Saturday after false alarms.
“There was no real threat, it was neither a question of planting a bomb nor of committing an act”, underlined at the end of the day the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, while France is on “emergency attack” alert after Friday’s attack.
In both cases, videos posted on social networks showed visitors leaving the rooms to the sound of alarm sirens, in a visibly feverish atmosphere.
First it was the Louvre, the largest museum in the world located in the heart of Paris, which announced around midday that it would exceptionally close “for security reasons”. At the end of the day, he indicated that it would reopen on Sunday “according to the usual hours”.
“The Louvre has received a written message reporting a risk for the museum and its visitors,” a spokesperson told AFP.
PHOTO SARAH MEYSSONNIER, REUTERS
French police officers patrol outside the Louvre Museum, closed for security reasons, in Paris.
“We have chosen, in the current national context of going into “emergency attack” alert, to evacuate it and close it for the day [de samedi]time to carry out the essential checks,” added the spokesperson for the museum, which houses the most famous painting in the world, The Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci.
A security perimeter was set up by the police all around the establishment. The adjacent shopping center, the Carrousel du Louvre, was also closed, leading to the cancellation in the evening of a play that was to be performed in one of the halls of the nearby Comédie-Française. announced the latter.
The Louvre was unable to say how many people had been evacuated from the museum. In 2022, it welcomed 7.8 million visitors.
Remove doubts
A few hours later, in the afternoon, the Palace of Versailles, a few kilometers from the capital, was in turn evacuated after a bomb threat, AFP learned from police sources.
This bomb threat came via an anonymous message on the site moncommissariat.fr, a source close to the matter told AFP. This same source indicated that the monument would not reopen on Saturday.
According to one of the police sources, the evacuation was intended to carry out checks in order to remove doubts.
Contacted by AFP, the castle’s press service confirmed the evacuation, without however specifying the reason.
This intervention “concerns the entire castle and estate,” added this source. At this time of the end of the high tourist season, “around 15,000 visitors, mainly French” frequent the entire vast site where the castle of King Louis XIV is located, according to the press service.
France went on Friday evening on “emergency attack” alert, the highest level of the Vigipirate system, after the assassination of a teacher, Dominique Bernard, stabbed to death by a radicalized former student in front of a middle school in Arras , in the north.
This act constitutes “Islamist terrorism” according to President Emmanuel Macron.
The Élysée announced on Saturday the deployment of 7,000 soldiers in the territory. These soldiers “will be deployed by Monday evening and until further notice”, specified the Presidency of the Republic, in a context marked by fears of importation into France of the conflict between Hamas and Israel.
Also in Paris, one of the halls of the Gare de Lyon, where major rail lines to the south-east of France depart, was evacuated due to abandoned luggage.
After the deminers’ passage, “the area was secured” without incident, indicated an SNCF spokesperson, stressing that it was a “usual procedure”.