'False alarm' sparks panic at Disneyland Paris
March 24, 2019
A stampede broke out at Disneyland Paris late Saturday, after the thunderous noise of a technical malfunction was mistaken for gunfire. Witnesses and officials said there was a mass panic after the din caused by a broken escalator.
"Everyone thought it was an attack. After a few minutes they made us leave through the back. There were police everywhere," one witness told AFP.
Later, the French Interior Ministry tweeted that the incident was a "false alarm." Police gave the all-clear around midnight and left the premises.
The theme park, which lies about 30 kilometers (18 miles) away from Paris, is one of Europe's most-visited private tourist destinations. In 2017, it welcomed 14.8 million visitors.
France has been the sight of numerous terror attacks in recent years, including the January 2015 attacks on the offices of the magazine Charlie Hebdo and the killing of 130 people around Paris in November of that year. In July 2016, 86 people were killed when an assailant drove a truck onto a popular tourist promenade in the southern city of Nice.
es/aw (AFP, dpa)
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