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LILLE

French police evacuate 200 in Lille over car with gas cylinders

Nearly 200 residents of a wealthy suburb of the northern French city of Lille were evacuated Saturday night after five gas cylinders were found in a car, police said, while playing down the likelihood of it being terrorist-related.

Published: 24 September 2017 09:27 CEST
French police evacuate 200 in Lille over car with gas cylinders
GasBottlesStockImage/Depositphotos

“There is a good chance that it is something fairly innocuous,” a police source said.

A resident raised the alarm at around 10:30 pm and the bomb squad was on site in the suburb of Lambersart as a precaution.

At the end of August, a concert in the Dutch city of Rotterdam was cancelled at the last moment after a tip-off from Spanish police. The driver of a van carrying several gas cylinders near the venue was arrested but later
released.

In June, a major bomb squad operation was launched after a vehicle with a dozen bottles of butane hidden under a tarpaulin was discovered in the Isere department of eastern France. It turned out that the driver was stealing from his employer, a freight company.

France has been under a state of emergency since Islamic State jihadists struck in Paris in November 2015, killing 130 people.

Since that large-scale attack and last year's Nice truck attack that killed 86, France has suffered a string of smaller assaults mainly targeting security forces.

FOOTBALL

Row over French stadium accident that left 29 hurt

The owner of French top-flight club Lille hit back at his rival at Amiens SC on Sunday, suggesting safety lapses were to blame for the collapse of a stadium barrier which left 29 fans injured during a game between the teams.

Published: 1 October 2017 08:24 CEST
Updated: 1 October 2017 13:19 CEST
Row over French stadium accident that left 29 hurt
Photo: Francois Lo Presti/AFP

The chairman of Amiens, Bernard Joannin, initially blamed hundreds of “hardcore fans” among Lille supporters for the shocking scenes during Saturday's Ligue 1 encounter in Amiens in northeast France.

“They surged forward, chaotically, more than 500 people, against this barrier, which was in perfect condition,” Joannin said after the accident which led the game to be abandoned.

Most of the victims were discharged from hospital on Sunday morning except six people who sustained serious injuries when the pitch-side barrier gave way, sending dozens of people tumbling on top of each other.

The Lille supporters – no more than a few hundred – pressed against the barrier early in the first-half as fans moved forward to celebrate their team's opening goal against newly promoted Amiens.

Gerard Lopez, the chairman and owner of Lille, told AFP he was “shocked” by Joannin appearing to blame hooligans for the accident.

“What's serious is that supporters are celebrating a goal and at the end there are injured people. It's very serious to talk about aggressiveness,” he said in a an interview on Sunday.

He also raised worries allegedly mentioned by supporters from Strasbourg, Marseille and Nice who had claimed the stadium was “not very solid”.

“I've seen photos of the stadium, the supports for the barriers,” he added.

Joannin said on Sunday he regretted his initial reaction.

Stop the arguments

Referee Thomas Leonard suspended the match in the 16th minute as Red Cross and emergency workers rushed to help the injured, while prosecutors have since opened an investigation.

“It happened all of a sudden. I don't even know who scored. It just suddenly fell on me. I couldn't hear anything, I couldn't see anything and then the emergency workers took me away,” said Georges Penel, a 21-year-old Lille fan who suffered injuries to his leg and back.

Built in 1999, the Stade de la Licorne (“Stadium of the Unicorn”) is the smallest of the 20 French Ligue 1 clubs, with a capacity of only 12,000.

Renovation work is taking place throughout the 2017-18 season, but chairman Joannin ruled out any link between improvements to the stadium and Saturday's accident.

“We shouldn't mix up work being done on the roof and the rest of the stadium, which has been checked and approved by all of the security commissions,” he told a press conference on Sunday morning.

In May, local politician Alain Gest had suggested that upkeep of the stadium had been neglected by previous local administrations but was now “perfectly in line with regulations” and “up to standards for playing in Ligue 1”.

The mayor of Lille, leading Socialist party figure Martine Aubry called for calm on Twitter, saying: “Let's stop the arguments. Think about the victims first and let's wait for the enquiry results.”