Eight French airports face security alerts

Six airports evacuated, Versailles closed for a third time as anxiety over terror attacks rises

PARIS – Eight French airports faced security alerts on Wednesday and several were evacuated for checks, aviation authorities said.

The Palace of Versailles was also closed again due to its third security scare in five days.

The airports affected were Toulouse, Biarritz and Pau in the southwest; Nice in the southeast, Lyon in the east, Lille in the north, and Rennes and Nantes in western France, according to Direction générale de l’aviation civile (DGAC) and the interior ministry.

Lille airport was evacuated due to a bomb scare, the airport had said earlier in the day in a post on the social media platform X.

“State security teams are on site,” the post said.

Lyon-Bron, Nice, Nantes, Biarritz, Toulouse and Paris Beauvais airports were also evacuated, the national police said.

As well, the airport of Ostend-Bruges in Belgium was evacuated after an alert, according to a report in Le Soir newspaper. 

The bomb threat at Lyon-Bron was a false alarm, local authorities said. Authorities in the region where Biarritz lies also said no serious threat was found and that the airport was reopening, even though air-traffic disruptions were to be expected. 

France has been on its highest state of alert since the Oct 13 murder of a schoolteacher in a suspected Islamist attack.

The Palace of Versailles, one of the country’s main tourist attractions, said it was again evacuating visitors for security reasons.

On Saturday, a day after the fatal stabbing of the teacher, bomb alerts that proved false forced the evacuation of the Louvre museum, the palace and Gare de Lyon train station in Paris.