I don't know if you've been following this, but there is currently a serious danger of terrorist attack in Paris.
I'm worried about the city.
When I first moved to Paris, you could park in front of an embassy or a church in Paris, before there were rows of metal fences blocking them off, before you had to walk through metal detectors to go to the U.S. consulate. I lived in Paris when a bomb went off in the metro, when a trash can exploded near Étoile, when threats of harm to Americans made many of us flock to meetings with consular security officials (who were certainly in more danger than we were). For a while now, we've all been used to security forces clearing a terminal at the airport to explode some hapless soul's suitcase, or seeing soldiers in camouflage with machine guns strolling around the Louvre. We forgot what it means. But things are heating up again and the signs are ominous.
Denmark raised its terror alert after an explosion that may have been a drill for an attack on the newspaper that published the Mohammed-as-a-bomb cartoon. Al Qaeda claims that it is behind the kidnapping of five French tourists in Niger, and last night three more Frenchmen going to an offshore oil rig were kidnapped off the coast of Nigeria.
Most worrisomely, last week a unnamed country in the Maghreb warned France that a woman suicide bomber was in Paris planning an attack, and a source at the interior ministry told a reporter that "that's not necessarily the most worrying thing." Matthieu Suc of France-Soir writes that the newpaper has information that the goal of the attack was the Gare du Nord-- terminus of the Eurostar from London, the Thalys from northern Europe, and the metros and trains that come in from the northern suburbs of Paris (some of the poorest ones).
France is on a "reinforced" Red Alert, the last stage before Scarlet (which means an imminent known attack). The minister of the interior calls for "the utmost vigilance" from all citizens, although Le Monde asked if this wasn't just a "mediatisation" to make people forget about the day of protests against the government set for Thursday in Paris. A responsable told the press that "We don't know when and where the attack will happen, but we know it will happen."
Be careful.
........................Postscript, 23 September 2010:
The national police chief Frédéric Péchenard admitted today that the information about the "woman kamikaze" is "in the end, not believable"; he added that "the terrorist threat is real" and that "we have a peak of danger at the moment and there are particular targets." Pechenard pointed out that "we have been able to stop an average of two terrorist attacks a year" since 1996. He asked for everyone to "remain serene" after a wave of fake bomb alerts followed the red alert.
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