Airports in the French cities of Lyon, Toulouse, and Lille have been evacuated in the latest string of security alerts in the “multicultural” nation since a Hamas terror raid on Israel.
The Palace of Versailles, once the seat of the French royal family, was evacuated “for security reasons” on Wednesday – the third such incident since the weekend. The Louvre Museum, home to iconic artworks including Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, was also evacuated Saturday.
France has been on high alert since the ongoing clash between Israel and jihadist groups including Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in the Middle East heightened tensions Western Europe, where Muslims have turned out in large numbers to support the Palestinians.
A Chechen refugee on the country’s national watch list stabbed a teacher to death just days ago while shouting “Allah hu Akbar” – although the incident was yet to be definitively linked to events in Israel as of the time of publication.
France, home to Europe’s largest Muslim population, has been targeted by more radical Islamic terror attacks than any other country on the continent in recent years, with the deadliest being the 2015 attacks which saw 131 people massacred at the Bataclan theater and elsewhere in Paris.
