The person suspected of having abandoned a “explosive device” improvised during a service was arrested a few hours after fleeing, according to the Toulouse prosecutor. It is around 8:30 a.m. this Friday morning when a man enters the Saint-Etienne cathedral in the capital of Occitania, during mass, to drop off a suspicious package. “I took him for a delivery mansays sexton Aurélien Dreux. He crossed the nave and deposited the package in front of the altar steps. He pushed me, he said something and he left..
After the incident, the sacristan asks the faithful to evacuate the cathedral, which adjoins the prefecture, and alerts the police. According to Father Jean-Jacques Rouchi, who celebrates Mass this Friday morning, the man has deposited “a white package that was between 20 and 25 cm wide”. “I only realized afterwards that it could be an attack. There were only 40 people, it was a weekday.he explains.
‘No claims’
The religious building quickly emptied, the area was cordoned off by the police and a team of deminers dispatched to the scene. A little later in the morning, Gérald Darmanin specifies that the package is similar “to an improvised explosive device, a priori without a firing device”.
The Minister of the Interior had reported around 9:30 a.m. on Twitter a “police operation in the city center of Toulouse” asking to avoid the area. Less than 45 minutes later, he declared that the operation was “finished” and that there was “no casualties”. “No claim has been made”, he added.
“Vigilance”
In the middle of the morning, the security perimeter was reduced, after two officers in white coveralls entered the cathedral, while a policeman came out with a dog. The Saint-Etienne sector is now reopened to traffic, the prefecture announced. The cathedral should be able to be accessible again in the afternoon, according to its press release.
A few days before Easter, Gérald Darmanin recalled the vigilance instructions given to the prefects, as well as to the heads of the police and the gendarmerie. The prefect of Haute-Garonne, Etienne Guyot, for his part specified that he had given “instructions to the security forces to provide very special vigilance to religious buildings”.
Update: 1:22 p.m., with more background.