This is the highest attack alert level. Sunday evening, Prime Minister Gabriel Attal announced “raising” the Vigipirate plan to its third level “emergency attack”. A decision which comes at the end of a defense council organized two days after the attack on a concert hall near Moscow, where 137 people died and 182 injured, according to the latest report. An attack claimed by the Islamic State in Khorasan (EI-K), the Afghan branch of Daesh. EI-K “had carried out several attempts on French “soil” in recent months, Emmanuel Macron declared on Monday. Since 2016 and the creation of the three-level Vigipirate system, this is not the first time that the “emergency attack” is put in place.
The “emergency attack” triggered four times since 2016
It was triggered for the first time in December 2018, after the attack on the Strasbourg Christmas market, which left five people dead and 11 injured. The “attack emergency” was lifted three days later. The highest level of the Vigipirate plan was also put in place in October 2020, after the attack on the Notre-Dame basilica in Nice, where three people were killed. In one month, four attacks had been committed, including the assassination of Samuel Paty. The level of vigilance then dropped back to the “attack risk” level almost five months later, on March 5, 2021.
More recently, this level of the Vigipirate plan was triggered on October 13, a few hours after the attack in a high school in Arras, where professor Dominique Bernard was assassinated. This was lifted on January 15. Until this Sunday evening, France has therefore returned to level 2 of the Vigipirate plan “reinforced security – attack risk”.
This Sunday is therefore the fourth time since 2016 that France is at the “emergency attack” level, and the first time that the decision comes after an attack that is not committed on French soil. This maximum level is not intended to last indefinitely, but only during crisis management. The triggering of the “emergency attack” allows the implementation of additional security means, such as the increase in the number of soldiers of the Sentinel force on the territory.