Five French airports were targeted by new bomb threats on Thursday and four were evacuated, airport sources said.
The five airports concerned are Bordeaux, Basel-Mulhouse, Tarbes, Pau and Biarritz, and all except the latter were evacuated, the source told AFP.
Despite these warnings, disruptions to air traffic appear to have been reduced, according to the online dashboard of the French Civil Aviation Authority, which nevertheless noted delays of an hour and a half on flights departing from Basel-Mulhouse.
The Franco-Swiss hub confirmed on X (formerly Twitter) that the terminal had been evacuated and aircraft movements "temporarily suspended" due to a bomb threat. It had already been evacuated on Tuesday, as had three other French airports, including Bordeaux.
Last week, nearly 70 false bomb threats were sent to French airports, "almost always from the same email address in Switzerland," French Transport Minister Clément Beaune said on Sunday. "More than 60 investigations have been launched in all locations."
France has raised the alert level of its Vigipirate anti-attack plan to maximum since the murder of teacher Dominique Bernard in his secondary school in Arras (Pas-de-Calais) on 13 October by a young man on file for Islamist radicalisation.
