Tourists at iconic French abbey forced to leave after threat
MONT-SAINT-MICHEL, FRANCE — French authorities forced tourists to leave the Mont Saint-Michel abbey Sunday and searched houses on the famed outcropping in the English Channel for a visitor who apparently threatened to attack security services.
The site reopened after about four hours of searching failed to locate such a person.
The exceptional and elaborate evacuation of one of France’s most visited tourist sites came after a string of sporadic attacks around France in recent years targeting police, some of them fatal.
Details of Sunday’s threat were unclear, but the national gendarme service said authorities ordered the evacuation as a precaution. The suspect was still at large Sunday and an official with the gendarme service said the search had been expanded to neighbouring towns.
An Associated Press reporter at the scene saw at least three police helicopters circling over the peninsula, notably famous for being isolated by high tides. The hilltop abbey, whose origins date to the 10th century, and surrounding sites attract more than one million visitors every year.
Thousands of tourists were affected by the evacuation, but the mood was calm. Some were taken out of their hotels, while others were blocked upon arrival.
“We wanted to go the mass at the abbey. But now we can’t,” said Clotilde, a 23-yearold from Paris who arrived Sunday morning.
Her friend Claire said, “We saw people walking back but we wanted to see as much as we could. So we tried to try to see it anyway, but we were told to go back.” The women wouldn’t provide their last names.
There was contradictory information about the circumstances of the threat. An official with the national gendarme service said the man made the threat Sunday on one of the shuttles serving the site.
The head of the regional administration, Jean-Marc Sabathé, told broadcaster Francetvinfo that the man made the threat when he was trying to stage a street performance and got in an argument with a café worker.
Sabathé said the man was caught on video surveillance cameras.