(Reuters) – The United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee (USOPC) is confident in the security measures planned for next year’s Paris Games, the governing body’s CEO Sarah Hirshland said.
French sports minister Amelie Oudea-Castera said on Monday there is no “plan B” for the Games’ opening ceremony, days after a man armed with a knife and hammer killed a German tourist and left two people wounded near the Eiffel Tower.
The attack occurred on the Quai de Grenelle – a spot also included in the plans for the opening ceremony of the July 26-Aug. 11 Games.
Hirshland said the USOPC was in close contact with French officials and that athlete safety was their top priority.
“Our governments are aligned, we have a pretty robust security effort under way and we will continue to have that in place,” Hirshland told reporters.
“I would tell you that at this point, while everybody is extraordinarily conscious of the environment in which we are all living and operating today, we have confidence that those conversations are satisfactory and that the plans are in place that need to be in place.”
France has been on high alert since raising its security threshold in October, when a Chechen-origin man with a knife killed a teacher in a school in northern France.
Bomb alerts in tourist attractions such as the Louvre museum and the Versailles palace have also increased in the wake of the Hamas attack in Israel on Oct. 7.
(Reporting by Aadi Nair in Bengaluru; Editing by Peter Rutherford)
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