Several French airports closed for hours; same thing in Belgium due to reports and false alarms while Europe locks down its borders, with Italy intensifying controls at the Slovenian border. The level of terrorist threat is increasing across the continent and at least nine EU countries, including ours, have notified the Commission of the suspension of free movement provided for by Schengen against the risk of attacks due to tensions in the Middle East. A measure of the sensitivity of such a high alert level is the case of the Palace of Versailles, forced for the third time in five days to evacuate visitors due to a bomb threat. In the last few hours, French airports have also ended up in the sights of the reports: those of Nice, Nantes, Lille, Lyon, Toulouse and Beauvais were forced to evacuate and then gradually reopened. Same measures for Ostend airport in Belgium, where in Brussels just two days ago the attacker Abdesalem Lassoued killed two people.
Video France, bomb alert at the Palace of Versailles
In Italy, Guido Crosetto underlines the security risks, especially in light of the story of the hospital destroyed in Gaza: “that incident can lead perhaps five, ten, a hundred people to think of having to avenge something that perhaps we don’t know not even who caused it and this is unpredictable”, explains the minister, according to whom “all it takes is one person who trains on the computer and goes out into the street with a knife or another who decides to blow himself up. And it’s yellow on the a bomb alarm was also triggered in the Jewish Ghetto of Rome: the report reached the police forces and the community school was evacuated as a precaution, with the students taken to a safe place. Shortly afterwards, however, the same Community, which had knowing about the alarm, he specified that it was an exercise. And again in the capital, moments of fear were experienced following the stabbing of a boy in the street by a 29-year-old Moroccan: the attacker was stopped by the police after an escape attempt and Digos is also working on the episode, but at the moment no terrorist origin appears to have emerged. The spotlight is instead on around fifty radicalized people in Italy and for this reason the investigators are paying attention: “they are not just asylum seekers – explain investigative sources – but also integrated people who live permanently here”. Since the beginning of this year, 54 have already been expelled for reasons of state security: the latest is a 28-year-old Gambian who landed in Italy in 2016. Meanwhile, our country, which is internally monitoring 28 thousand sensitive targets in addition to the main junctions, is about to activate temporary controls (from 21 October for a period of ten days) on the border with Slovenia. Effectively suspending Schengen as done by Austria, Germany, Norway, the Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia, Sweden and France for some of their borders.
“The level of threat of violent actions has also increased within the Union”, says Palazzo Chigi in a note, where another summit between the government and intelligence on the risk of terrorism was held today. The choice to close the borders with Slovenia, says the government, has a precise reason: “the police measures at the Italian-Slovenian border are not adequate to guarantee the required security”. For Minister Ciriani this is “a decision that allows us to better control the flow of incoming and outgoing people in the context of the Balkan route”. The strengthening of Italian surveillance also concerns the borders with other territories, such as Austria and Switzerland, and in particular the strengthening of the surveillance of migratory flows: identifications are also envisaged on liners with photo signaling equipment, “to reduce to zero the possibility that people whose identities we do not know will be transferred from Lampedusa to the mainland”, said the prefect Valerio Valenti, commissioner delegate for the state of emergency for migrants. “The picture – underlines Palazzo Chigi – is further aggravated by the constant migratory pressure to which Italy is subject, by sea and by land: 140 thousand arrivals on the Italian coasts, +85% compared to 2022”.
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