“Several foreign nations” including Poland will send soldiers to help secure the Olympic Games in Paris this summer, while France is on maximum alert in the face of the threat of attacks, AFP learned this Thursday, March 28 from from the French Ministry of the Armed Forces.
“Several foreign nations will strengthen us in certain critical areas, such as dog capabilities, where the needs are enormous” during the Olympics, according to the ministry. This practice is common, recalls this source. Thus, French gendarmes participated in securing the sites during the Football World Cup in Qatar.
“A task force”
Earlier, the Polish Minister of Defense announced that his country would send military reinforcements to help secure the Olympic Games in Paris. “The Polish armed forces will join the international coalition set up by France to support the preparation and security of the 2024 Summer Olympic Games,” Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz said on the social network . “A task force composed of our soldiers, including with sniffer dogs, will be deployed in Paris. Its main objective will be to undertake operations to detect explosives and fight against terrorism,” added the minister.
According to the spokesperson for the Polish army general staff, “the decisions have already been taken”. “We are in the process of building a ‘task force’ for the Olympics,” Joanna Klejszmit told AFP, adding that the chief of staff of the French armies, Thierry Burkhard, was visiting Poland on Thursday.
The French government decided last Sunday, immediately after the attack on the Moscow concert hall where 143 people died, to raise the Vigipirate plan to its maximum level, “emergency attack”, four months before the Olympic Games in Paris.