France evacuates airports over hoax bomb threats – media

Fourteen airports reportedly received threats in the second mass evacuation incident in two days, sources told AFP

Fourteen airports in France received bomb threats on Thursday, triggering evacuations from at least eight, an inside source told AFP. It was the second such incident in two days.

The French Civil Aviation Authority confirmed that “several national airports, including Nantes, received threats of attack [Thursday] morning,” but did not specify how many or which airports were affected.

Brest (Finistere), Bordeaux-Merignac (Gironde), Montpellier (Herault), and Nantes (Loire-Atlantique) were among those evacuated. Lille Airport was also evacuated due to a bomb threat on Thursday, it revealed in a post on X (formerly Twitter). 

It was the second time in as many days that Nantes, Rennes, and Lille airports were forced to evacuate due to hoax threats. A total of 17 “threats of attack” were called in to airports on Wednesday, leading to 15 evacuations. The authorities closed the facilities to “clear up any doubts” about the veracity of the threats, police sources told AFP.

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Strasbourg Airport confirmed it had evacuated on Wednesday in response to “a malicious email,” while Beauvais revealed an “anonymous threat” had been received by several airports, and Nice reported an “abandoned baggage item” had triggered the panic. Other airports affected on Wednesday included Toulouse, Biarritz, Pau, and Lyon.

Wednesday’s evacuations led to 130 canceled flights, as well as numerous delays. 

Transport Minister Clement Beaune pledged to crack down on phony bomb threats in a post on X on Thursday. “These false alerts are not bad jokes. They are crimes,” he wrote, warning perpetrators that penalties for “organized false alarms” include up to two years in prison and a €30,000 fine. 

Minister of Justice Eric Dupond-Moretti warned false bomb threats could incur even steeper penalties – up to three years in prison and a €45,000 fine. 

Paris’ Louvre Museum and its attached underground shopping center were both evacuated and closed for the day on Saturday after staff received a written message warning of a “risk to the museum and its visitors.” 

The palace at Versailles was also evacuated on Saturday after receiving a bomb threat via anonymous online message. It has since been evacuated three more times due to security threats, with the most recent incident taking place on Thursday. 

France has been under its highest possible terror threat level since last Friday after a Chechen Muslim immigrant suspected of Islamic radicalization stabbed a teacher to death and wounded two others in an attack on his former school in Arras, an incident that Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin connected to Israel’s war with Hamas. Some 7,000 troops have been deployed as part of the joint military-police initiative Operation Sentinelle in order to beef up security nationwide.