(Reuters) — Cannes is ramping up security ahead of the city’s world-famous film festival which begins on Wednesday (May 17), with a local police chief saying no expense was being spared.
Authorities have installed about 550 security cameras, a row of 400 shoulder-high flowerpots acting as discreet concrete barriers along the promenade, 160 meters (yards) of spiked chains that can stop a truck, deployed extra forces, and called on a battalion of civilian volunteers to inform them of any suspect activity.
Yves Daros, head of the municipal police, said it was the “densest” camera network in France.
It is the first festival since the attack in nearby Nice last July when a Tunisian man drove a 19-ton truck into a crowd celebrating Bastille Day on the promenade, killing at least 80 people.
France has been under a state of emergency since November 2015, when coordinated gun-and-bomb attacks in Paris killed 130 people and wounded 368. Just last month a policeman was shot dead in central Paris – the most recent in a string of attacks claimed by Islamist militants.