PARIS, October 20. /TASS/. At least 15 French airports have received bomb threats, and at least three of them have already started evacuating passengers, Le Parisien reported citing the Directorate General for Civil Aviation.

It was reported that eight airports in Lille, Rennes, Beauvais, Tarbes, Nantes, Bezier, Pau and Brest were initially targeted by the threats. Later, it was said that similar threats were received by airports in Toulouse, Lyon, Bordeaux, Biarritz, Carcassonne, Nice, as well as EuroAirport Basel Mulhouse Freiburg on the border with Switzerland. However, according to the daily, only three airports, namely Bordeaux, Bezier and EuroAirport Basel Mulhouse Freiburg, were evacuated. The BFMTV channel reported earlier that the airports of Tarbes and Rennes had been evacuated.

France has recently seen a slew of fake bomb threats, targeting transport, school and cultural institutions. Anonymous threats began coming after the knife attack by a 20-year-old man at a public school in Arras in northern France on October 13. Dominique Bernard, a literature teacher, was stabbed to death and three more people, including a school security guard, were injured. France has been put on maximum counterterrorism alert after the attack.

French Justice Minister Eric Dupont-Moretti said that 22 fake bomb threats are being officially investigated. Several suspects have already been detained, including a man who caused the Palace of Versailles to be evacuated on Thursday.