Terrorist attack during Olympics would be 'very badly perceived by public opinion worldwide'

There is no "plan B" for the opening ceremony of the Paris 2024 Olympic Summer Games, the French sports minister said on Monday, after a man armed with a knife and hammer killed a German tourist and left two people wounded near the Eiffel Tower on Saturday. "We have no plan B, we have a plan in which there are several sub-plans with a certain number of adjustment variables," Amelie Oudea-Castera told France Inter radio. The 26-year-old suspect, a French national arrested after the attack, had pledged allegiance to Islamic State in a video recorded beforehand, anti-terrorism Prosecutor Jean-Francois Ricard said on Sunday. The attack occurred on the Quai de Grenelle - a spot also included in the plans for the opening ceremony. Asked if the government was mulling a change to its plan to hold the ceremony on the River Seine, with several hundred thousand spectators expected along its banks amid the security threats, the minister said: "This not something we're working with." "We have the capacity to secure the event", she said, adding that certain details, including the number of additional cultural events surrounding the main spectacle and said the security perimeter would be adjusted closer to the Games. 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. For more on the Olympic security concerns following the Paris knife attack, FRANCE 24's Mark Owen is joined by Dr. Jean-Loup Chappelet, Professor of Public Management in the Swiss Graduate School of Public Administration (IDHEAP) at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland.