French police evacuated thousands of passengers from the Paris urban rail network on Thursday in a false bomb alert following a tip-off by a CIA agent in Spain, French authorities said. The hour-long alert along the RER A line, one of the main rail lines linking the French capital with its suburbs, turned up nothing suspicious.
"The alert was lifted at 9:30pm. Nothing suspect was found," a police spokesman said.
A spokeswoman for the Interior Ministry said the alert had followed a tip-off from a Spanish CIA agent to the French DST counter-intelligence service of a possible attack on the Paris urban rail network.
She gave no further details on the nature of the threat indicated by the CIA. The office of President Jacques Chirac said authorities had chosen to take the threat seriously.
"We were warned by the Interior Ministry of an attack threat on the RER," an aide to Chirac told reporters. "They were taken seriously because there is no justification for us to take unnecessary risks."
The RER A line links central Paris to its east and west suburbs and carries around 40,000 passengers during the evening rush hour from stations including the Arc de Triomphe, the La Defense business park and Chatelet in the old city center.
France has been on high alert since the March 11 bombings in Madrid which claimed 191 lives, and a number of threats made to French interests in recent weeks. Chirac has urged the French to be particularly vigilant in public places.
Before that, Air France and British Airways cancelled a series of flights to the US over Christmas and the New Year after US intelligence warned of Sept. 11-style attacks on European flights to the US.
Last month a railway worker found a bomb half-buried on the main train line between Paris and Switzerland on March 24.
French authorities have also received letter threats from a self-proclaimed Islamic group whose authenticity is in doubt, and from a previously unknown group called AZF which has since suspended threats to blow up parts of the national rail network.
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