Crime & Justice

French high school in Friday’s terror attack evacuated after bomb alert

Paris, Oct 16 (EFE).- The high school in the northern French city of Arras where a teacher was killed last week in an attack by an Islamist terrorist was evacuated Monday because of a bomb threat.

Law enforcement officials set up a security perimeter around Gambetta high school while bomb squad members checked the school, police sources told reporters.

Students, teachers and staff were evacuated from the school. Classes were due to resume in the early afternoon, Education minister Gabriel Attal said.

Similar threats over the weekend also led to the evacuations of the Louvre Museum and the Gare de Lyon in Paris, as well as the Palace of Versailles.

Classes on Monday began later than normal, at 10am, after teachers’ unions met to prepare a tribute planned for the afternoon to honor the victim of Friday’s stabbing attack, Dominique Bernard.

Some 60,000 schools and colleges across France were due to take part in the tribute.

Attal warned that no “retaliation or provocation” would be allowed to interrupt the tribute to the teacher, in a reference to protests three years ago during tributes to Samuel Paty, a French secondary school teacher who was killed by an Islamist terrorist after he had displayed images of the Muslim prophet Mohamed during class.

Attal, who on Monday morning was at a high school in Paris, condemned as “inadmissible and unacceptable” the 168 bomb threats that have been made against schools in France since the start of the academic year on Sep. 4.

“Our hand will not tremble,” he said, as he explained how authorities were pursuing the alleged perpetrators of these threats.

Attal also defended the “secular”, “mixed” and “free” French education system that “the Islamists are trying to attack”.

French president Emmanuel Macron, presided Monday afternoon with several members of his government over a meeting on security measures being deployed in the wake of Friday’s attack, including the mobilization of 1,000 security and prevention officers in schools. EFE

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