French airports evacuated after ‘threats of attack’

PARIS — Airports across France were evacuated on Wednesday after e-mailed “threats of attack”, a police source told AFP, the latest in a series of similar alerts.

The evacuations at Lille, Lyon, Nantes, Nice, Toulouse and Beauvais airport near Paris would allow authorities to “clear up any doubts” whether the threats are real, the source said.

A spokeswoman for Strasbourg airport in eastern France also said the site was being evacuated after a “threatening e-mail”.

The Palace of Versailles, a major tourist attraction outside Paris, was evacuated for the third time since Saturday for bomb disposal teams to check the site.

France is on high alert following Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel and Friday’s fatal stabbing of a teacher in the northern city of Arras by a man claiming allegiance to the Daesh group.

A second police source said that Nice, Lyon and Lille airports had resumed normal activity around midday.

A spokesman for France’s DGAC aviation authority confirmed evacuations over bomb warnings only at Lille, Lyon, Toulouse and Beauvais, and was unable to give further details immediately.

The DGAC’s online dashboard showed significant delays at Lille, Lyon and Toulouse.

A post on Nice airport’s X (formerly Twitter) account said that “following an abandoned baggage item... a security perimeter was set up to allow the usual checks”.