Tourists were back on the Champs-Elysees early yesterday with a mixture of shock and defiance, a day after a man shot dead a police officer on the world famous avenue on the eve of France’s election.
“I needed to get out, to come back here and see the sunshine, and that everything was OK,” said Lebanese tourist Zeina Bitar, 45, who was shopping on the boulevard with her children when the gunman struck.
Nearby, a police officer laid a white rose at the site where the shooter felled his comrade with an automatic weapon, unleashing a firefight in which the assailant was killed and two other officers were wounded.
Photo: AFP
“We heard the shots and people were running in every direction, but people were calm, we were well treated and they gave us hot chocolate,” Bitar said, adding that her children were in tears.
Under a cloudless spring sky, the dozens of emergency and security vehicles of the night before had been replaced by media trucks on the glitzy tree-lined avenue — a symbol of Paris.
Passersby snapped pictures of shop windows punctured by bullet holes.
“What’s happening here?” asked Indian tourist Chaintnya Veeraghanta, 25, who had been unaware of the shooting. “I knew there were terrorism attacks in France last year, but I thought it was over.”
More than 230 people have been killed in terror attacks in France since early 2015, leading to a ramping up of security, with thousands of troops deployed to patrol key sites.
“It was scary. We heard the shots so we ran to our hotel ... and found out it was terrorism by watching the news,” said Eric Winkler, 51, an American visiting the French capital from Boston.
However, he and his 16-year-old daughter Hailey took it in their stride.
“It’s happening all over the world, also in America,” he said. “We have to deal with it, they’re not going to stop us from living and doing what we want to do.”
Bitar’s friend, Pascale Saad, 42, also from Lebanon, said she was worried about the effects the attack would have on France’s presidential election starting with its first round of voting tomorrow.
“I really don’t know what’s going to happen Sunday,” she said. “I’m afraid that things will degenerate and that people will all vote for Marine Le Pen.”
The far-right presidential candidate, who is riding high in the polls, is seen as the most hardline on the issue of terror attacks and advocates harsh limits on immigration.
Visiting from Los Angeles, 60-year-old Felix Cervantes said he could have been at the Champs-Elysees on Thursday evening, but had gone to the Louvre instead.
“I’m not afraid at all,” Cervantes said. “We’re going to stay in Paris till next week whatever happens.”
Scottish tourist Lesley Douglas, 55, had mixed feelings.
“We’re convinced that Paris is the safest place in the world, but of course we were scared seeing the policemen with their guns,” she said.
However, her 62-year-old husband Michael was adamant that the couple would visit the French capital “for years to come,” adding: “Vive Paris.”
A Chinese aircraft carrier group entered Japan’s economic waters over the weekend, before exiting to conduct drills involving fighter jets, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said yesterday. The Liaoning aircraft carrier, two missile destroyers and one fast combat supply ship sailed about 300km southwest of Japan’s easternmost island of Minamitori on Saturday, a ministry statement said. It was the first time a Chinese aircraft carrier had entered that part of Japan’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ), a ministry spokesman said. “We think the Chinese military is trying to improve its operational capability and ability to conduct operations in distant areas,” the spokesman said. China’s growing
Nine retired generals from Taiwan, Japan and the US have been invited to participate in a tabletop exercise hosted by the Taipei School of Economics and Political Science Foundation tomorrow and Wednesday that simulates a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan in 2030, the foundation said yesterday. The five retired Taiwanese generals would include retired admiral Lee Hsi-min (李喜明), joined by retired US Navy admiral Michael Mullen and former chief of staff of the Japan Self-Defense Forces general Shigeru Iwasaki, it said. The simulation aims to offer strategic insights into regional security and peace in the Taiwan Strait, it added. Foundation chair Huang Huang-hsiung
PUBLIC WARNING: The two students had been tricked into going to Hong Kong for a ‘high-paying’ job, which sent them to a scam center in Cambodia Police warned the public not to trust job advertisements touting high pay abroad following the return of two college students over the weekend who had been trafficked and forced to work at a cyberscam center in Cambodia. The two victims, surnamed Lee (李), 18, and Lin (林), 19, were interviewed by police after landing in Taiwan on Saturday. Taichung’s Chingshui Police Precinct said in a statement yesterday that the two students are good friends, and Lin had suspended her studies after seeing the ad promising good pay to work in Hong Kong. Lee’s grandfather on Thursday reported to police that Lee had sent
BUILDUP: US General Dan Caine said Chinese military maneuvers are not routine exercises, but instead are ‘rehearsals for a forced unification’ with Taiwan China poses an increasingly aggressive threat to the US and deterring Beijing is the Pentagon’s top regional priority amid its rapid military buildup and invasion drills near Taiwan, US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said on Tuesday. “Our pacing threat is communist China,” Hegseth told the US House of Representatives Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense during an oversight hearing with US General Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “Beijing is preparing for war in the Indo-Pacific as part of its broader strategy to dominate that region and then the world,” Hegseth said, adding that if it succeeds, it could derail
RSS