The French army says such training sessions are regular refresher courses that every soldier takes several times a month and were not implemented in response to recent violent incidents involving patrols.
Soldiers stationed in Paris for the Olympic Games have taken part in a close combat training session following a string of knife attacks targeting security forces deployed in the French capital.
A dozen infantry forces in full gear staged close contact attacks, punching and kicking training bags, wielding batons and using dummy rifles to neutralise a would-be assailant.
“Today we really focused on standing impacts, with all of our gear on. We use fists, feet, batons and rifles. We focused on these standing positions but there’s all sorts of other techniques for various situations,” said Sergeant Jeremy, who declined to give his surname for security reasons.
The French army says these training sessions are refresher courses that every soldier takes several times a month and were not implemented as a response to recent violent incidents involving patrols.
Last Monday, a man stabbed and wounded a French soldier patrolling Paris just days before the opening ceremony of the 2024 Olympics.
The stabbing occurred outside the Gare de l’Est train station in eastern Paris.
The soldier was hospitalised with a shoulder blade injury, but was not in life-threatening condition, officials said after the attack.
And on Thursday, a police officer was injured in a similar knife attack in the Champs-Élysées neighbourhood. The assailant was ‘neutralised’ by officers.
“With this kind of training, we are already in a capacity to tackle these threats (knife attack) and we are always on high alert so we don’t need to change our procedures because we already take this threat into consideration,” explained Captain Thomas.
Paris has been under a high security alert before the start of the Summer Games on July 26.
Thousands of troops serve in the Sentinelle force for France’s domestic security, created to guard prominent French sites after a string of deadly Islamic State extremist attacks in 2015.
Soldiers in the Sentinelle force have been targeted in the past.
Paris is deploying around 30,000 police officers each day for the Olympics, which run from July 26 to August 11, with a peak of 45,000 for the opening ceremony on the Seine river.
“Our deployment order covers the entire Olympic Games and our orders are to support the Interior Security Forces – police, gendarmes, firefighters, who are all on the frontline – to secure the Olympics. We act as support for the FSI and our goal is to be deployed across town to be able to intervene in case there’s a terrorist threat. We focus on anti-terrorism,” said Captain Thomas.
About 18,000 members of the military are also helping ensure security, with thousands of them staying in a huge camp erected on the edge of the capital.
