Fears voters will st ay away as police told: You can’t carry guns near polls
VOTERS go to the polls today amid warnings that France’s 67,000 polling stations are potential terrorist targets.
Fears of an attack increased after it emerged that police are prevented by law from guarding them with guns.
The country’s Interior Minister Matthias Fekl declared yesterday that ‘no armed security force can appear in and in the immediate vicinity of the polling stations. This is the democratic rule.’
His warning prompted concerns that fears of a random attack could deter some voters from turning out. While 50,000 police officers will be on duty, supported by 7,000 soldiers, they can only be called in an emergency. Polling station managers will be given a hotline to summon the nearest patrol.
Police trade union leader Celine Berthon said France was facing a ‘dangerous day’. She added: ‘There will be more voting stations than police and gendarmes mobilised.’
She described polling booths as ‘extremely symbolic targets’ which would undoubtedly be ‘an important target for a terrorist organisation’.
France’s Counter-Terrorism Co-ordination Unit has confirmed that the threat to all the leading candidates, who will vote this morning, is high.
Two men with links to Islamic State were arrested in Marseilles last week after threatening to murder one of them, believed to be the republican contender Francois Fillon.
There was panic at Paris’s busiest rail station, Gare du Nord, yesterday when a man walked in brandishing a knife. He was quickly arrested by police.