Toulouse: explosive device without firing in the cathedral, a wanted individual

Europe 1 with AFP 1:18 p.m., April 8, 2022

The Saint-Etienne cathedral in Toulouse was evacuated Friday morning in full mass, after a man, still wanted, left a package containing a homemade explosive device a priori without a firing device, we learned from concurring sources.

No claims made

The area was cordoned off by the police all morning while deminers were dispatched to the scene, AFP noted.

Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin, who had reported around 9:30 a.m. 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".

The package looked like "an improvised explosive device, a priori without a firing device" and the individual, who "hustled the sexton", is "actively sought", he specified at the end of the morning. in a statement to the Cnews channel.

He added that the facts had occurred at 8:30 a.m.: "The individual left a package during mass (...) no claim was made".

After the incident, the sexton, jostled while trying to intercept the man, asked the faithful to evacuate the cathedral, which adjoins the prefecture, and alerted the police.

"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 cathedral again accessible this afternoon

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 this Friday morning.

"I only realized afterwards that it could be an attack. There were only 40 people, it was a weekday," he said.

In the middle of the morning, the security perimeter was reduced, after two agents in white coveralls entered the cathedral, while a policeman came out with a dog, noted an AFP journalist.

The prefecture announced in the middle of the day that "traffic in the Saint-Etienne sector is reopened to traffic. The cathedral should be able to be accessible again in the afternoon", according to a press release.

Mr. 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".