BY DUNCAN MIL
With 25 competition venues in the Paris region and 13 in the capital alone, organisers have initiated Opération Sentinelle to provide “protective bubbles” around all Olympic sites.
French soldiers have been patrolling in Paris since a spate of terrorist attacks in 2015 killed 130 people and injured more than 350.
"It's completely logical for the armed forces to contribute" to Olympic security, said Chief of Defence Staff General Thierry Burkhard.
“It’s completely logical for the armed forces to contribute” to Olympic security, said Chief of Defence Staff General Thierry Burkhard.
“Given that it’s an exceptional event, there can be an exceptional contribution. The real question for me is planning ahead… given that some things are likely to happen more or less at the last minute,” Burkhard added.
General Burkhard’s plans currently call for 15 000 troops - as part of Opération Sentinelle - to protect transport hubs and major routes to the Games, while 30 000 police cover the approaches to Olympic sites each day. Private security firms will manage access and the space inside the cordons.
Referring to the 20 000 civilian staff needed to operate Olympic security, one senior civil servant told AFP that the Games’ organising committee “will never manage to recruit the staff they need from private security,”
During the 2012 London Olympics, the British government had to deploy 3 000 additional troops days before the Games started as private security company G4S failed to provide enough private security guards.
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