There is not any “plan B” for the opening ceremony of the Paris 2024 Olympic Summer Games, the French sports activities minister mentioned on Monday, after a person armed with a knife and hammer killed a German vacationer and left two individuals wounded close to the Eiffel Tower on Saturday.
“We have no plan B, we have a plan in which there are several sub-plans with a certain number of adjustment variables,” Amelie Oudea-Castera informed France Inter radio.
The 26-yr-outdated suspect, a French nationwide arrested after the assault, had pledged allegiance to Islamic State in a video recorded beforehand, anti-terrorism Prosecutor Jean-Francois Ricard mentioned on Sunday.
The assault occurred on the Quai de Grenelle – a spot additionally included within the plans for the opening ceremony.
Asked if the federal government was mulling a change to its plan to carry the ceremony on the River Seine, with a number of hundred thousand spectators anticipated alongside its banks amid the safety threats, the minister mentioned: “This not something we’re working with.”
“We have the capacity to secure the event”, she mentioned, including that sure particulars, together with the variety of extra cultural occasions surrounding the primary spectacle and mentioned the safety perimeter can be adjusted nearer to the Games.
France has been on excessive alert since elevating its safety threshold in October, when a Chechen-origin man with a knife killed a trainer in a college in northern France.
European safety officers have warned of a rising danger of assaults by Islamist militants amid the Israel-Hamas warfare, with the most important risk seemingly from “lone wolf” assailants who’re laborious to trace.
For the primary time in historical past, the Opening Ceremony of the Olympic Games won’t happen in a stadium. On 26 July 2024, 1000’s of athletes will parade in boats alongside the Seine, the river that flows by Paris, in entrance of a whole bunch of 1000’s of spectators.
Some 160 boats will set off on July 26 from the Pont d’Austerlitz for a six-kilometre journey to the Pont d’Iena in an occasion Tony Estanguet, the pinnacle of the organising committee, described as “unique and spectacular”.
The Opening Ceremony of the Paris 2024 Summer Olympics would be the largest held within the historical past of the Games. It might be open to all: native residents from Paris and its surrounding area, together with guests from throughout France and around the globe.
