Toulouse city center cordoned off after a suspicious package in the cathedral
The Saint-Etienne cathedral in Toulouse was evacuated Friday morning in full mass, following the irruption of a man who deposited a suspicious package at the foot of the altar before fleeing.
The Saint-Etienne cathedral in Toulouse was evacuated Friday morning during mass, following the irruption of a man who left a suspicious package at the foot of the altar before fleeing, sources told AFP. consistent. According to a source close to the investigation, the package contains an unusually shaped improvised explosive device, without a firing device. The neighborhood was immediately cordoned off by the police and deminers were dispatched to the scene, AFP noted.
Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin, who had reported on Twitter a “police operation in downtown Toulouse” asking to avoid the area, added less than 45 minutes later that the operation was ” over. No casualties”. He was due to make a televised statement around 11:00 a.m. The sacristan, jostled while trying to intercept the man, asked the faithful to evacuate the cathedral, which adjoins the prefecture, and he alerted the police after the incident which left no one injured.
“A package under the arm”
“A man came in with a parcel under his arm. I took him for a delivery man. He crossed the nave and put the parcel in front of the altar steps. He jostled me, he said something and he left,” sexton Aurélien Dreux told an AFP correspondent. The man left “a white packet which was between 20 and 25 cm wide”, added for his part Father Jean-Jacques Rouchi who celebrated mass on Friday morning. “I only realized afterwards that it could be an attack. There were only 40 people, it was a weekday,” he said.