Bomb Threat Shakes Book Fest

The threat of a bomb at the Paris Book Fair on Sunday forced organizers to clear the building. It is thought that there may have been a political motivation for the scare. From AP:

A bomb alert Sunday at the Paris Book Fair, which this year honors Israeli writers, prompted the evacuation of thousands of people but appeared to be a false alarm, Paris police officials said.

An anonymous caller phoned the central phone number for the fair and said a bomb would go off at 5 p.m., according to Jean-Daniel Compain, director of REED, a company that organizes the Paris Book Fair. He said 25,000 people were evacuated.

Special police squads moved in quickly and conducted a search but did not find anything, Compain said.

A little over an hour later, the fair reopened and visitors began streaming back in.

The full story comes to us by way of the International Herald Tribune and it’s here. The Book Fair is scheduled to run until the 19th.