Louvre and Versailles close in France after threats – 10/14/2023 – World

The Louvre Museum, in Paris, closed exceptionally this Saturday morning (14) after receiving a threatening message. In the afternoon, the Palace of Versailles, another of France’s main tourist attractions, also had to be evacuated due to a bomb threat.

To the AFP news agency, a spokesperson stated that they chose to empty the Louvre “for the entire day, an essential time to carry out a check”, in order to keep the place and potential visitors safe.

In Versailles, which will also not reopen this Saturday, the alert was made through an anonymous message sent to a reporting portal, a police source told AFP.

The decisions come one day after a knife attack at a school in the city of Arras, in northern France, which left at least one person dead. In reaction to the episode, which was classified as terrorist, the government decided on Friday night (13) to raise the country’s alert level to “emergency attack”, the highest on the scale. He also announced the mobilization of 7,000 soldiers throughout the territory by Monday night (16).

The attack was carried out by a man of Chechen origin already known to security agencies due to his involvement with radical Islam. At the time of the attack, he allegedly shouted “Allahu Akbar”, city hall and police sources told AFP. The expression, which means “God is greater” in Arabic, is common in Islamic cultures, but has also become frequent in terrorist attacks in recent decades.

The perpetrator of the attack was arrested, according to French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin. In addition to killing a French language teacher at Gambetta school, he also injured two other people.

President Emmanuel Macron visited the scene of the crime on Friday and described what happened as an act of “Islamic terrorism”.

The French National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office is investigating whether the attack is linked to terrorist organizations, as it took place in the context of escalating tensions between the Jewish and Muslim communities in France due to the war between Israel and the terrorist group Hamas that has been ongoing for a week.