French forces hold anti-terror drill

LYON: French security and emergency forces took part in an exercise simulating a terrorist attack on a stadium in Lyon, as a group of EU interior ministers met elsewhere in the city on Tuesday.

Several hundred members of the police and emergency services as well as actors playing terrorists were involved in the training exercise at the stadium of the premier-division football club Olympique Lyon.

Actors pretending to be terrorists attacked the stadium with explosives and automatic rifles; special police forces then stormed the building by using armoured vehicles and drones.

Interior ministers from six EU countries and representatives from the EU Commission, the US and from Tunisia are taking part in the meeting in Lyon, which began on Monday evening. The ministers are discussing the fight against terrorism and migration among other issues.

During a working dinner on Monday, the host of the gathering, French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe, called for better cooperation on migration policies. Italy’s Matteo Salvini, Italy’s far-right, antiimmigration interior minister who has repeatedly clashed with other EU states on the issue, was also at the meeting.

“The immigration question can not be answered on the national level,” Philippe wrote on Twitter.

Other representatives at the gathering were the Polish, British and Spanish interior ministers alongside Germany’s parliamentary secretary of state for the Interior Ministry, Stephan Mayer.

US Attorney General Jeff Sessions and a representative from the US Department of Homeland Security joined the meeting on Tuesday.