President Emmanuel Macron said on Monday that he fears the Islamic State jihadists have plans to attack Paris.
His government has deployed an extra 4000 troops to secure the forthcoming Paris 2024 Olympic Games scheduled for July 26- August 11.
President Macron said that the Islamic State entity believed to be behind the Moscow attack – known as Khorasan, which is a branch in Afghanistan and Pakistan – had also sought to attack France.
“This particular group made several attempts (at attacks) on our own soil,” Macron told reporters during his trip to French Guiana.
French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal echoed this sentiment by saying that “the Islamist terrorist threat is real, it is strong” and “it has never weakened”.
He said that 4,000 extra soldiers would be deployed nationwide in the days to come.
“Our fight against terrorism is not just about words. It is very concrete and our hand will never tremble in the face of terrorism, never in the face of Islamism,” Attal insisted.
Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin said that the Paris Olympics, which begin on 26 July, were an obvious future target.
“France, because we defend universal values, and are for secularism… is particularly threatened, notably during extraordinary events such as the Olympics,” he said.
French security forces are screening up to a million people before the Games, including athletes and people living close to key infrastructure, according to the interior ministry.
France was last placed on its highest terror alert in October after a suspected Islamist burst into a school in the north of the country and stabbed a teacher to death. The alert was then downgraded in January.
