France on Terror Alert
The Washington Post reports:
When an unclaimed package was spotted in a busy Paris subway station Monday, police immediately diverted trains, ordered thousands of frustrated travelers into the street and dispatched a bomb squad to test for explosives.
Within half an hour, the armor-suited specialists had determined there was no bomb. Train and subway passengers flooded back into the Saint Lazare station, rail lines re-opened and France's increasingly nervous anti-terrorism authorities breathed a sigh of relief.
The alert was short-lived but the message was clear: France has the jitters over the possibility of a terrorist attack. In a country where people sometimes make fun of precautions taken in the United States since Sept. 11, 2001, President Nicolas Sarkozy's government has gone out of its way in recent days to warn repeatedly that terrorists may be planning a new attack in France.
Tension has also risen because of the capture of five French people on Sept. 15, along with two African colleagues, at a remote French-operated uranium mine in the central African country of Niger. Their abduction was acknowledged by al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, a band of several hundred extremists who have pledged loyalty to Osama bin Laden and for the past decade have been marauding in the vast deserts of Niger, Mauritania, Mali and Algeria.
Bernard Squarcini, who heads the Central Directorate of Internal Intelligence, warned in two interviews that the threat within France was also particularly high- "All the blinkers are on red," he declared. The Interior Ministry said a foreign intelligence service had passed along a report that a woman had been overheard suggesting a suicide bombing was being prepared for Paris.
Although officials later dismissed that report as unreliable, they maintained the high alert.
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