Islamist terrorism is the main security worry ahead of the upcoming Paris Olympics, the French capital's chief of police Laurent Nunez said on Friday, according to the Reuters news agency.
France is on its highest level of security alert as the Games approach, with the country additionally preparing for snap legislative elections at the end of June.
"Islamist terrorism remains our main concern," Nunez told a press conference seven weeks before the Olympics opening ceremony, which will be held on and along the River Seine on July 26.
He stressed, "There is no clear-cut threat yet against the Games and our country but I'd like to remind you that at the end of May, two individuals were arrested in Saint-Etienne and were plotting a project aimed directly at the Olympic Games."
"The terrorist threat remains just as important as the protest threat posed by radical environmental groups, the ultra left and the pro-Palestinian movement," Nunez said.
Last month, an 18-year-old Chechen man was arrested in the city of Saint-Etienne, suspected of planning an attack in the name of Islamic State (ISIS) at the city's soccer stadium during the Olympics.
A month earlier, French anti-terrorism authorities arrested a 16-year-old youth who said on social media that he wanted to die “a martyr” at the Olympic Games.
France, which has been on high alert in the wake of terrorist attacks in recent years, raised its terror alert warning to its highest level in March, following an attack in Moscow which was claimed by ISIS.
France was hit by a series of Islamist attacks, including the January 2015 attacks on the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo and the Jewish Hyper Cacher supermarket in Paris.
In November of that year, 130 people were killed in a series of jihadist attacks in Paris claimed by ISIS.
In October of 2020, a man stabbed three people to death at the Basilica of Notre-Dame de Nice. He was later handed terror murder charges.
(Israel National News' North American desk is keeping you updated until the start of Shabbat in New York. The time posted automatically on all Israel National News articles, however, is Israeli time.)
