Hours before the highly anticipated opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics, the Franco-Swiss Basel-Mulhouse Airport was evacuated and temporarily closed on Friday morning following a bomb alert.
According to a report from Reuters, airport authorities briefly suspended operations at the busy international hub.
“For safety reasons, the terminal had to be evacuated,” a statement on the airport’s website read.
Hours later, the airport announced that it was reopening and that flight operations would gradually resume.
This is not the first time the airport authorities have received such an alert. Since October 2023, they received seven alerts, officials told Reuters.
Earlier today, France saw a series of coordinated attacks on the country’s high-speed TGV train network.
Sabotage operations targeted key rail lines, causing significant disruptions across some of the busiest routes mere hours before the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games.
Video footage circulating online shows crowd-filled train stations, as trains were diverted or canceled due to the sabotage.
In a statement on X, the French railway company SNCF asked “all travelers who can to postpone their trip and not go to the station.”
The saboteurs also targeted and set fire to the cables that ensure the safety of train drivers.
SNCF CEO Jean-Pierre Farandou told journalists that authorities “don’t know who is behind it.”