A man has surrendered to police after he reportedly threatened to blow himself up at the Iranian consulate in Paris with a suicide vest.
According to Mail Online, the man gave himself after 2pm, walking out of the consulate with his hands in the air and giving himself over to police at the scene.
‘He had no explosives or weapons on him,’ said a security source. ‘He was placed under arrest immediately and taken away to a secure police station for questioning.’
Specialist BRI officers continued to swarm around the area, together with sniffer dogs, just in case explosives had been hidden in the area.
‘The security perimeter will be maintained for a while yet,’ said the source.
The individual was for a time holed up inside the building in the French capital’s 16th arrondissement in a room with the ambassador, one report said.
He was said to be wearing an explosive belt and equipped with an object that resembled a grenade, Europe 1 and other sources reported earlier.
The area was cordoned off and evacuated, with a police source saying that an ‘intervention was imminent’.
This suggested officers had been preparing to storm the building.
‘A witness saw a man enter carrying a grenade or an explosive belt,’ a source told France’s AFP news agency, adding that an elite police unit had been mobilised after the consulate requested an intervention.
‘The man presented him at the consulate, and then removed his coat, to show off an alleged explosives vest,’ another security source said at the scene.
‘He said he was carrying a grenade, and then placed a national flag on the floor. He said he wanted to avenge his brother.’
Police ordered the city’s Metro Line 6 to be interrupted as a safety measure.
Europe 1 reported that the embassy contacted the police requesting assistance, reporting that the man was inside the building. It said he was holed up in a room inside the consulate ‘in the presence of the ambassador’.
There were no reports of an explosion.
The incident came amid increasing tensions between Israel and Iran, with the Jewish state today launching strikes against the Islamic Republic.
This was in response to Iran launching over 300 missiles toward Israel on Saturday, 99 percent of which were intercepted by Israel and its allies.
