Berlin/Paris - European capitals tightened
security on Friday ahead of New Year's celebrations, erecting
concrete barriers in city centres and boosting police numbers
after the Islamic State attack in Berlin last week that killed
12 people.
In the German capital, police closed the Pariser Platz
square in front of the Brandenburg Gate and prepared to deploy
1,700 extra officers, many along a party strip where armoured
cars will flank concrete barriers blocking off the area.
"Every measure is being taken to prevent a possible attack,"
Berlin police spokesman Thomas Neuendorf told Reuters TV. Some
police officers would carry sub-machine guns, he said, an
unusual tactic for German police.
Last week's attack in Berlin, in which a Tunisian man
ploughed a truck into a Christmas market, has prompted German
lawmakers to call for tougher security measures.
In Milan, where police shot the man dead, security checks
were set up around the main square. Trucks were banned from the
centres of Rome and Naples. Police and soldiers cradled machine
guns outside tourists sites including Rome's Colosseum.
Madrid plans to deploy an extra 1,600 police on the New Year
weekend. For the second year running, access to the city's
central Puerta del Sol square, where revellers traditionally
gather to bring in the New Year, will be restricted to 25,000
people, with police setting up barricades to control access.
In Cologne in western Germany, where hundreds of women were
sexually assaulted and robbed outside the central train station
on New Year's Eve last year, police have installed new video
surveillance cameras to monitor the station square.
The attacks in Cologne, where police said the suspects were
mainly of North African and Arab appearance, fuelled criticism
of Chancellor Angela Merkel's decision to accept nearly 900,000
migrants last year.
The Berlin attack has intensified that criticism.
In Frankfurt, home to the European Central Bank and
Germany's biggest airport, more than 600 police officers will be
on duty on New Year's Eve, twice as many as in 2015.
In Brussels, where Islamist suicide bombers killed 16 people
and injured more than 150 in March, the mayor was reviewing
whether to cancel New Year fireworks, but decided this week that
they would go ahead.
PARIS PATROLS
In Paris, where Islamic State gunmen killed 130 people last
November, authorities prepared for a high-security weekend, the
highlight of which will be the fireworks on the Avenue des
Champs-Élysées, where some 600,000 people are expected.
Ahead of New Year's Eve, heavily armed soldiers patrolled
popular Paris tourist sites such as the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de
Triomphe and the Louvre museum.
In the Paris metropolitan area, 10,300 police, gendarmes,
soldiers, firemen and other personnel will be deployed, police
said, fewer than the 11,000 in 2015 just weeks after the Nov. 13
attack at the Bataclan theatre.
Searches and crowd filtering will be carried out by private
security agents, particularly near the Champs-Élysées where
thousands of people are expected, authorities said.
Across France, more than 90,000 police including 7,000
soldiers will be on duty for New Year's Eve, authorities said.
On Wednesday, police in southwest France arrested a man
suspected of having planned an attack on New Year's Eve.
Two other people, one of whom was suspected of having
planned an attack on police, were arrested in a separate raid,
also in southwest France, near Toulouse, police sources told
Reuters.
"We must remain vigilant at all times, and we are asking
citizens to also be vigilant," French Interior Minister Bruno Le
Roux told a news conference in Paris, noting that the threat of
a terrorist attack was high.
In Vienna, police handed out more than a thousand pocket
alarms to women, eager to avoid a repeat of the sexual assaults
at New Year in Cologne in 2015.
"At present, there is no evidence of any specific danger in
Austria. However, we are talking about an increased risk
situation," Interior Minister Wolfgang Sobotka said.
"We are leaving nothing to chance with regard to security."
In Ukraine, police arrested a man on Friday who they
suspected of planning a Berlin copycat attack in the city of
Odessa.
(Additional reporting by Maria Sheahan in Frankfurt, Kirsti
Knolle in Vienna, Teis Jensen in Copenhagen, Isla Binnie in
Rome, Sarah White in Madrid, Robert Muller in Prague, Bate Felix
and Johnny Cotton in Paris; Writing by Paul Carrel; Editing by
Louise Ireland)