Sports

Stade de France Beefing Up Security with Snipers for First Event Since Attacks

Stade de France will host France’s opening game of the Six Nations rugby tournament this weekend against Italy—the first sporting event at the stadium since the November 13th terrorist attack during a soccer friendly against Germany. Terrorists with explosive vests sought to gain entry into the stadium, but were only able to detonate their vests outside the building. The explosion caused damage, but it could have been much worse. The attacks sprawled into Paris, including the deadly shooting at The Bataclan. As a result, security is on high alert this weekend and they are going so far as to have snipers on the stadium grounds.

Snipers, sniffer dogs and extra searches will anchor the biggest security operation seen at a sporting event in France when the national rugby team host Italy in their opening Six Nations game at the Stade de France on Saturday.

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The police presence will be more than doubled from previous international rugby events. Typically, Stade de France would have 100 cops and 700 security staffers for this event, but this weekend they will use more than 250 police and 950 security staffers. There will be multiple checks before entering the stadium and bomb squads will begin sweeping the area on Friday.

This is all well and good, and at the very least necessary to—as security head for the event Robert Broussard put it—let people come to the event “feeling confident.” But as we’ve learned, a much more important aspect of stadium security is stopping would-be terrorism before it gets there.

[The Guardian]